Everything was fine until I bragged to the pool store clerk yesterday that my pool was running great. I woke up this morning to my Lochinvar ER252 coded "soft lockout; ignition failure". Each time i try to restart, it goes through the pre-purge stage with fan kicking on, then into ignition stage where I hear one loud click before it jumps back to pre-purge mode. I am not hearing the igniter spark, just that first loud click. I am getting good smell of gas during pre-purge so it seems gas is flowing during ignition stage. This happens 4-5 times before it goes into soft lockout; ignition failure mode. I cleaned off the igniter sensor with knife and fine sandpaper and still the same. Does anyone have other suggestions for troubleshooting; the manual is really vague? Does this sound like a bad sensor? Thanks.
ignition not firing
- Thread starter mrichard
- Start date
- Jul 21, 2013
- 52,480
- Pool Size
- 35000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
swamprat69
Well-known member
This looks to be the manual for your heater... https://www.lochinvar.com/lit/ERP-SER.pdf You have both a flame sensor and a spark ignition rod. The flame sensor needs to be clean and have clean grounding surfaces. The spark ignition rod also needs to be clean and have a clean surface and good ground (usually to a burner ) to the surface that it creates a spark to.
Thank you. I cleaned the igniter with sandpaper and scraped it with a knife. I cannot find a visual of the flame sensor in the manual but I will attempt to locate and clean next. Furnace has worked for 5 years so I assume they are both grounded but will double check my connections.
swamprat69
Well-known member
In the manual I sent you a link for it seems to show on page 7 a straight rod flame sensor attached by a 1 screw tab as a control module input. On page 8 it seems to show a bent at the tip electrode that is attached with a rectangular 2 screw plate (usually copper or copper plated) as a control module output . On page 16 the illustration shows the bent electrode rod attached above the middle left burner and the straight flame sensing rod attached above the middle right burner.