Need Help!! Quadrafire 1200i Problem.

[Finman]

Hello All,

This has me boggled and I can't seem to figure it out. If anybody has any ideas, opinions or whatever kind of help it'd be greatly appreciated!!

I have an older CB-1200i with a manufacture date of April, 2001. The stove has provided me with years of great service, but this year it decided to give me a headache...

The stove was thoroughly cleaned at the end of last season and was awaiting this year's first cold weather. This year I went to turn it on and there was a red call light on, but no pellets were feeding. Pushing reset did nothing. The igniter does come on, but still no feed. Here are the tests I've done so far and what I've found:

Checked exhaust and it is clear through up the chimney.
Checked the snap disc on the side of the feed motor and it is ok and did not need to be reset.
Jumped the vacuum switch and the feed motor does turn on.
Disconnected the vacuum line at the feed motor and put vacuum to it and it did activate the switch and it does hold vacuum and turn on the feed motor.
Jumped the convection blower and it does work.
Jumped snap disc #2 and it does turn on and off the red call light, as does the thermostat turn on and off the call light.
Tested every possible voltage and tested for power at every place possible and all seems to be correct according to the service manual specs.

One thing I haven't done and don't know how to test for, is the door gasket and to test for a good vacuum seal around the door. How do you test this other than to replace it?

For some reason, I just feel that enough vacuum is not being created to activate the vacuum switch and start the feed motor...

The door gasket doesn't seem to be in all that bad of shape. I will say though that the adjustment screws for the door latches are completely screwed in and can't be made any tighter. Could this be the problem? Is it that the door isn't sealing tight enough and allowing enough vacuum to escape?? Can this be tested somehow? I will say that the vacuum switch doesn't require all that much vacuum to activate it and I would think that the door gasket has to be in dire straits to create that much vacuum loss but maybe I'm completely wrong too.

Anyway, if anybody has any ideas of what else I can try, I would appreciate anything because I'm pretty much stumped at this point... Thanks in advance for your help


--Fin

 

[chrisasst]

you can test the doors gasket by putting a dollar bill or piece of paper between the doorand body, then shut the door, latch it and then trying to pull it out. If it pulls out you probably need a new gasket. If you can't pull it without ripping it, you should be fine.

 

[Finman]

you can test the doors gasket by putting a dollar bill or piece of paper between the doorand body, then shut the door, latch it and then trying to pull it out. If it pulls out you probably need a new gasket. If you can't pull it without ripping it, you should be fine.

Tried the dollar bill test and I can pull it out on the middle section of the top of door. That is about the only place that it pulls out, so I guess I'll try to get my hands on a new door gasket and see what happens after installing it.

ps. Thanks for your suggestion and help!! Cortland's a nice area. I've got a house an hour further up 81 in Pulaski and I've got some friends from Cortland that I fish with.

 

[McdaMahon]

clean out fitting on auger feed tube , where the other end of hose connects from vac switch. see if that helps

 

[Finman]

clean out fitting on auger feed tube , where the other end of hose connects from vac switch. see if that helps

Thanks for the suggestion!! Yeah, I made sure that everything pertaining to vacuum switch is clean as a whistle.

I went to the dealer where I bought the stove to get new door gasket material and they didn't have anything near the diameter of what is on my stove. The largest diameter they had was 7/8" hollow rope and the gasket from my door was definitely larger in diameter and had a solid core. I spoke to the guy who does the repairs for the dealer and went through "everything" with him and he seems to be stumped too. He did say he thinks it's a vacuum issue too though. He looked at my gasket and told me there is nothing wrong with it and if he was me he would reinstall it but turn it 90 degrees from the previous installation. He also said and showed me that the gasket does not have to fit tight as vise for the stove to create enough vacuum to operate. He said the dollar bill test is an ok test, but to not bet the farm on it just because you can pull the bill or piece of paper out.

He did show me two other little doors on each side of the fire pot below the heat exchanger tubes to remove and make sure are cleaned out that I never even realized were there, so that's the next thing I'll try. He also said a service call from him is 75 bucks an hour starting when he leaves his shop...Ugh!

I just can't figure out what I'm missing here... I understand how the stove operates and I understand how and what the electrical components do to make the stove work or not work. I've checked and double checked everything, but I'm obviously missing something and/or not seeing something... What I don't have is any repair history and experience to know and have learned the little tricks and other quirky things.

Back to trying to figure this out...

 

[Nicholas440]

If you have the small sliding ash cleanout openings on either side of the burnpot make sure both are tightly closed, if they are open even a tiny bit you will not have enough vaccum for the pellets to feed..

 

[Finman]

If you have the small sliding ash cleanout openings on either side of the burnpot make sure both are tightly closed, if they are open even a tiny bit you will not have enough vaccum for the pellets to feed..

Thanks!! I just got done doing that and they are actually tighter than they were before. I noticed the left side had a little tiny weld splash burr at the bottom so I knocked it off with a chisel so the bottom sat down tighter...

Fired up the stove and Nothing again... This definitely has me perplexed... Especially since I also can't think of anything that has changed since it last worked like a charm.

On the lighter side, I think I've created some new swear words that might stick with me for a while...LOL

 

[detroit442]

you can test the doors gasket by putting a dollar bill or piece of paper between the doorand body, then shut the door, latch it and then trying to pull it out. If it pulls out you probably need a new gasket. If you can't pull it without ripping it, you should be fine.

Hi, new poster here. I'm also having similar problems with my Castille unit. The gasket on my door is only on the sides and the bottom. There is no gasket on the top side of the door. It's never had one. My question is how is it supposed to develop vacuum if the door isn't sealed?

Thanks

 

[slls]

It's designed that way, air wash for the glass. All Quads have air wash. The combustion fan has more than enough pull power to over come designed leaks. There really more designed leaks than just the air wash.

 

[detroit442]

It's designed that way, air wash for the glass. All Quads have air wash. The combustion fan has more than enough pull power to over come designed leaks. There really more designed leaks than just the air wash.

Thanks for the respopnse. I've got another control box on order and I really hope it fixes the problem.

 

[Finman]

Well, I've been playing with this stove for a couple of hours now just doing some tests with a small hand vacuum gauge that I very soon came to realize that the guage is not even necessary. The amount of vacuum that is needed to activate the vacuum switch and start the feed motor and auger turning is so small that it barely even registers on the guage. I don't know how much vacuum is created by the combustion motor and is drawn from the stove itself either because that won't register on the gauge either, but being that it takes hardly anything to activate the switch tells me that my stove isn't drawing even squat for vacuum and I have no idea why...

I do believe the combustion motor is working properly though and I do know that I have clear clean pathway of venting from the stove exhaust, through the exhaust tube, and straight up through my chimney. I'm running out of things to even think of trying...

Anybody have any other ideas?

 

[slls]

On my FS, when I close the door with the combustion fan running, I can hear the air rushing by the door as it closes.

 

[Dr_Drum]

O.k. unplug the stove. Duct tape over the combustion air intake hole. Take a small amount of pellets and hand light them with a blow torch or something. Throw a piece of slightly damp newspaper on top. Close the doors. It should start to smoke pretty good. Have a hair dryer duct taped to the exhaust, outside. Have the wife turn it on (low) and look for smoke leaking out of the fire box. This should pressurize the stove and if there's a leak you should be able to spot it, or at least smell it? I wouldn't normally recommend something like this, but you sound ready to pay $75/hour for a service tech. :gulp:
Just an idea, of course be smart about it. You only need a little smoke and be prepared to remove the duct tape and turn on the combustion exhaust fan quickly.
Mike -

 

[Finman]

Well after being away on business for a bit and then coming home and getting sicker than a dog, I finally got back to the stove on Saturday and tried one last shot at figuring this whole thing out. There was really only one thing that I hadn't looked at yet and that was the exhaust pipe going up through my damper and flue. After completely taking out the pipe, it turns out that a friendly little mouse had made a nest in the top of the pipe that I assume was not creating a total blockage of exhaust, but of course enough to cause a loss of vacuum in the stove... Ugh... Guess maybe I should have known better to check "ALL" the stupid possibilities first...

Cleared the nest out, put everything back together, fired up the stove and everything worked like it was supposed to work...

Thanks to everybody that helped Time to burn some of these expensive pellets that have been gathering dust...