Maxim M250 woes, FO troubleshooting

[Fbd]

Hey All,
I’m a first time poster. Apologies if this issue has been addressed in the past. Here goes. I inherited a Maxim M250 with a house a couple of years ago. For all intents and purposes it ran last year. This year I’m having a problem of keeping it going. It started out happening occasionally but now about every 45min the water temp dips dramatically from 175 down to 160-155 in a short period of time. Then it starts to climb back, never makes it past 167ish. Then I get a Fire Out warning on the panel. I replaced the fan, and the wiring for that last year. I’ve got a new aerator and burn pot inside. All the gaskets are new. I did a factory reset on the panel for air flow and auger speed. There is no problem with pellets getting to the burn chamber. When I open the burn chamber there is usually some air flow and actual fire still burning or a very well laid bed of embers. When I turn it off then on again it starts up fine and comes right back up to temp and thus the cycle begins again. I don’t have anyone in my area that has experience with or will even service this model because they are so awful. CB has mostly not returned my call and if they do are incredibly unsympathetic And unhelpful. The manual is unhelpful for troubleshooting and I was not able to find solutions from similar style boilers. I have tried as many avenues as I am able to. Any tips, suggestions or hints would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

 

[Woodman1]

I know they are not close to you but Hettingers in Galesburg Michigan was/ is a great dealer. It would be worth a call. He Probably will be familiar enough with it to walk you through and could easily ship you parts.

 

[harttj]

The water temperature drop sounds like a call for heat. Nothing wrong there.
The fo alarm is flame out. There is a thermocouple in the burn chamber and if it senses less than 300 degrees it says the fire is out. It could be slightly different as I have a 175. If the fire is still going need to investigate the thermocouple.

 

[Fbd]

I know they are not close to you but Hettingers in Galesburg Michigan was/ is a great dealer. It would be worth a call. He Probably will be familiar enough with it to walk you through and could easily ship you parts.

Thank for recommending that company. I was able to get a hold of them and they tried their best to help but were not able to diagnose the problem because of the distance.

 

[Fbd]

The water temperature drop sounds like a call for heat. Nothing wrong there.
The fo alarm is flame out. There is a thermocouple in the burn chamber and if it senses less than 300 degrees it says the fire is out. It could be slightly different as I have a 175. If the fire is still going need to investigate the thermocouple.

It did end up being the thermocouple in the burn chamber. I was broken and bent at the tip. It was a pain to remove but I was able to replace it easily and it has worked better than ever since. I assume that some of the irregular burning problems have been because of that.