Hayward h250 propane ignition failure

[gsf4726]

I have a Hayward h250 ed2 propane heater with electronic ignition. It's fairly old, my guess is about 15 years. It's in decent condition however and I keep it clean.

I'm having a frustrating problem with ignition failures. Frequently, when starting it, it will ignite successfully, run for 5 seconds, then will shut off. After it does that 3 times, the "IF" code is displayed on the control panel. Occasionally, it will work fine and stay running after the first ignition (usually when testing it during the day). Problem seems to occur pretty much every time I'm ready to use it, frequently at night.

I've noticed this to be a fairly common problem and I've done quite a bit of troubleshooting based on info from the manual and posts online. Here's what I've already done.
- replaced the ignitor
- tested all the safety switches with multimeter (even though I believe if one of them were triggered or faulty I wouldn't even be able to start it)
- removed and cleaned the burner tubes
- cleaned the orifices
- when it does stay running, I've put a mirror on the bottom and verified all flames are uniform across all burners.

So I'm quite sure the gas is flowing and igniting correctly, but theory is something is causing it to not detect a flame. At this point, I'm starting to suspect the control module itself mostly because I don't think there's anything else to check and given the intermittent-ness of it.

I thought I'd check here to see if anyone has ideas about other causes of this issue, or for some confirmation that it could be the control module before I drop $300 on a new one.

Thanks in advance!
Greg

 

[ps0303]

Where the ignitor connects to the system board, is that black pod solidly connected or is there play in it? They connection sometimes does come unsoldered and thus can cause issues like you are seeing. Seeing that you installed a new ignitor, I would check that connection.

IF only means one thing and points to the ignition process.

 

[Ted527]

Check that any ground wires are clean and tight, especially for module. Definitely a flame rectification problem.
If everything is clean and tight only thing it could be is the module since that unit has no separate flame sensor.

 

[gsf4726]

Just wanted to follow-up on this. As advised, I inspected the igniter connection on the control module. It wasn't noticably loose, but I noticed something sticking out from behind the PCB in the area. I removed the board to find that some insect had nested in the gap. There was some visible damage to the trace leading to the igniter module. This was enough evidence for me to go ahead and order a new control module.

I got the part yesterday, and happy to report that it's started and stayed running for several tests overall the last day.

Thanks for the help!