Burnham Series 2 On Durning Power Outage

[dion747]

During storm sandy we were in black out, yet the boiler kept turning over and not producing heat. Was it leaking co2?
Thanks for any help you can offer.
DW

[Dana]

I'm not sure what "kept turning over" means?

Is the burner turning on?

CO2 is a byproduct of the flame, but unless the exhaust venting is missing or blocked you wouldn't have a CO2 build up in the house. CO (carbon monoxide) would be the bigger concern, but on an atmospheric-drafted beast like a Burnham CO2 exhaust leaking into the house isn't usually an issue unless you have an extremely tight house and you have the clothes dryer or other high-volume exhaust vent running causing the flue to run backward. (not likely.)

[dion747]

It started up like it had power - but there was no heat coming from the floor boards - then it would go off and then on again - I smelt gas in the boiler room - you can hear the machine running? Thank you for your reply btw - I told the landlord but he is almost 90 and forgets things and I have to stay on top of this - So yes it turned on and off without power. Smelt like gas and was off again

[Dana]

Does "you can hear the machine running" mean you hear the roar of the burners, or does it mean you hear the circulation pump whirring away?

If the zone relay or (less likely) circulation pump was fried by a power surge it's possible that the burner is coming on, running the boiler's temperature up to it's high-limit, then kicking off until it hits the low-limit temperature (which could take a couple of hours), but for that to happen there has to be power to the burner controls. With no power the internal controls the internal valving to the burners could not normally open on a Burnham series 2, and without power for the high-limit aquastat to interrupt, it would just keep on burning, not a repeated cycling on/off.

In order for the heat to get to the baseboards, there has to be power to the pumps and zone relay, yet it's possible for components to fail such that the burner operates (when powered) without the pump running.

If what you smell is really natural gas, turn the gas valve off where it enters the house and get the gas company or a repair-tech with a sniffer to verify. This is not something a newbie should be attempting to deal with on a DIY basis.

[jadnashua]

With the power off, with a boiler (unless it was a really old gravity fed system, and yours almost certainly isn't), while the burner might come on, you will not get any heat to the living spaces because the pump needs a/c power to push it there. In fact, most thermostats wouldn't trigger the burner to turn on because the 24vac control circuits are run from a 120-vac transformer, which wouldn't have any output if the power was out.

Now, when the power was restored, it could have been spiking all over the place and fried something.