Hayward H400IDL2 Gas Heater Keeps Tripping

[boooney]

Hi-
I have a 6 year old Hayward Pool Heater which I use a few times a month to heat up the hot tub. It overheated badly one day, as it had gotten terribly sooted up. I took the whole thing apart and brushed off the soot from the heat exchanger. I put the thing back together and it starts up fine, however...

After about 2 mins, it shuts off. The fan blowing, but the flame goes on and off at fairly rapid frequency. It sounds like a sad donkey which keeps on puffing and puffing. There are no error codes and although heating very intermittently, the hot tub doesn't get any warmer.

I called Hayward and they said that I should have it checked out.

Do you know how I can diagnose this myself? Thanks in advance.

 

[ps0303]

Did you look at the blower motor when you took it a part? Was the "squirrel" cage intact? If it's not intact it is then not exhausting correctly thus causing the unit to overheat. It could also be the blower vacuum switch as well.

BTW, I believe the blower motor is no longer available so it might be hard to find one.

 

[boooney]

The blower is working fine. Do you think it's the bower switch then? Could it be anything else?

Thanks much!

 

[ps0303]

Please do a visual inspection of the blower motor, the squirrel cage in particular. Make sure there are no missing fins on it. Even if you have missing fins the motor might sound fine as well as it might be enough to activate the blower switch. Only way to make sure is to visually inspect it. If you find out that all is good, then you can investigate the blower switch.

An example is is, I went to do a repair, customer said heater was cycling with heat. The blower sounded ok but the heater would drop out and then relight over and over. I pulled the motor out and half of the squirrel cage was rusted away. So there was enough there to activate the blower switch to allow it to light but not enough to prevent it from dropping out the flame and re lighting over and over.