Alpine 210 soft lockout code 11

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SRB

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Hello
Visiting my parents house.
Burnham Alpine 210
Installed 2014.
Has operated apparently trouble free.

Yesterday I noticed the house getting cool.
I went to the basement to see what was going on.
Alpine display was flashing red. I went through screens and found soft lockout code 11.

At Visits in past years, I occasionally saw a flashing red screen, didn’t do anything and it went away on its own.
Yesterday, after seeing the red screen a while, I turned the boiler off, waited, then turned it on again.
Went through cycles of purge, preignition, ignition, then running (I may have left a couple out)
After running for some seconds, it went to safe startup and then back to purge through running.
This happened a number of times, but finally seemed to stay running and the house heated.

I have always noticed, during the 7 years, it seemed to start and stop a lot, but thought that is just how it works.
Reading the forum, I see this is called short cycling.
I went through the display screens and saw it has run 6800 hours and 93,000 cycles.
That does look like short cycles.

Today the house is getting cool again. I checked and found red flashing screen and soft code 11.
Turning it off and on doesn’t seem to have worked.
It is running for a few seconds, then goes to safe startup followed by all the steps but not staying running very long.

I see a similar forum situation where it was fixed by replacing temperature sensors.

I looked inside and that doesn’t look too difficult.
A question though.
It has many ball valves to isolate components. If I shut off the ball valves isolating the boiler, is that sufficient or does it have to be drained?

When open, I noticed the air vent valve had corrosion. Should that be replaced too?

In the past I have called heating companies inquiring about annual or periodic service.
Most don’t seem to want to work on it.
I don’t really trust the company that installed it as I caught them trying to cut too many corners.
One company,who told me he was trained on the Alpine said it is a good boiler and you don’t need to do anything for at least seven years. I have replaced the neutralizing cartridge every year though.

So, do you think replacing the temp sensors is the best route? Or?
Where can good Alpine techs be found in the Boston/Cambridge area if that doesn’t work?

Background
1927 house, 2300 sf, original cast iron radiators, 40 windows in house, 10 more in the basement, heated 2 car garage and poorly insulated

Thank you
 

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Update. A couple hours after I last checked, the boiler is back working again and heating the house. So it resolved the soft lockout itself.
It does seem though that something must be wrong.
Ideas?
Thank you
 

Fitter30

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Code 11 ignition failure tries 5 time then locks out. Boiler should looked at once a year. Besides looking at the water pressure and expansion tank there might be filters to clean, how the flame is burning and check the controls. Call alpine see who the distributor is call them for a referral.
 

SRB

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Code 11 ignition failure tries 5 time then locks out. Boiler should looked at once a year. Besides looking at the water pressure and expansion tank there might be filters to clean, how the flame is burning and check the controls. Call alpine see who the distributor is call them for a referral.
Than you
 

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I have a US Boiler K2 and this same problem occurred. it was only after several sessions of debugging that US Boilers admitted that there is a circuit between the condensation trap and the flame sensor that has been removed from new K2's. the circuit decreases the flame sensor reading as the sensor in condensation trap becomes wet. it was only after pointing out this circuit to US Boilers that they admitted it has been removed. They suggest disabling the circuit as it is error prone and leads to intermittent fault 11's and in my case that has resolved the fault 11 from occurring.

I am putting this here and necro bumping this thread as this is high on google results for K2 fault 11 and I hope this can help others. I have asked US Boiler to update their documentation or issue an errata as there are likely many folks out there experiencing this and unable to resolve the issue.

Best of luck!
 

Fitter30

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Just doing a search on both boilers ( without diagrams off the boilers or what came with iom) can't be sure there the same. Two diagrams are not the same the Alpine float control is in series with 4-5 other safeties.
 

Nonenonenone

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the only thing that would need to be the same is a circuit between the flame sensor and condensate trap. regardless if it is same or not, like i said in my post this shows up in early hits on google searching specifically for "us boiler k2 fault 11" and i had previously reviewed this thread when techs could not discover source of issue. if there had been something here it would of saved me a lot of time and energy. so, this is also relevant to k2. sorry original poster if this doesn't help you ... but if it does let us know!
 

Fitter30

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There is nothing that surprises me. 47 out of 50 years running commercial and industrial service. Worked in a factory residential equipment lab for 5 months for a small company. With electronics changing every 6 months factory service can't keep up.
 

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I have a US Boiler K2 and this same problem occurred. it was only after several sessions of debugging that US Boilers admitted that there is a circuit between the condensation trap and the flame sensor that has been removed from new K2's. the circuit decreases the flame sensor reading as the sensor in condensation trap becomes wet. it was only after pointing out this circuit to US Boilers that they admitted it has been removed. They suggest disabling the circuit as it is error prone and leads to intermittent fault 11's and in my case that has resolved the fault 11 from occurring.

I am putting this here and necro bumping this thread as this is high on google results for K2 fault 11 and I hope this can help others. I have asked US Boiler to update their documentation or issue an errata as there are likely many folks out there experiencing this and unable to resolve the issue.

Best of luck!
Thank you for posting this! I have an ALP210 installed in my newly built house in 2014. Same problem as the OP. I had two techs from my gas company come by, the same company that does my annual maintenance. The first one called the manufacturer for help and tried adjusting the air fuel mix. That seemed to work for a couple of weeks. Failed again, second tech comes by, he thought my gas pressure wasn’t high enough. He increased it a little at the regulator. Worked for a few days or so we thought. Now it won’t run at all. I’ll have to explore this avenue.
Thanks again for sharing
 
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SRB

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Thanks to nonononenone for the lead.
I was hesitant to have a tech come out and start whack a mole parts replacement.
Boiler still has code 11s come up, but they always resolve themselves.
 

Pete Johnston

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the only thing that would need to be the same is a circuit between the flame sensor and condensate trap. regardless if it is same or not, like i said in my post this shows up in early hits on google searching specifically for "us boiler k2 fault 11" and i had previously reviewed this thread when techs could not discover source of issue. if there had been something here it would of saved me a lot of time and energy. so, this is also relevant to k2. sorry original poster if this doesn't help you ... but if it does let us know!
But you didn't mention how to fix this issue.....there will be an orange wire tied in with the flame sensor either running to the flue sensor or a sensor on the condinsate trap....the way to fix this issue is to cut that wire and it will not let the flame signal go to ground though the sensor. I had to find this out the hard way!
 

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Update. A couple hours after I last checked, the boiler is back working again and heating the house. So it resolved the soft lockout itself.
It does seem though that something must be wrong.
Ideas?
Thank you
During the summer, it got to the point where the boiler would not ignite at all.
I found a YouTube video where the high temperature sensor failed and caused the issues.

I replaced the high temp sensor and the boiler is good as new. No code 11s, no hard starts.
The part number for the original was superseded, so it may have been problematic.

The only difference from the schematic is the high temp sensor is in the middle, not the end.

Pretty easy to replace.

I waited until now to update to give it time to actually be the cure.

Thanks for all the help.
 
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