a-1 error

[Golfstove]

I started up our e classic yesterday and instanteanously recieved an a-1(thermocouple error). Was wondering if this was common and how much it effects the burining process. My dealer is looking into the problem and I am awaiting his call.

In the second day of use we have not been able to get our "wood only" model up to temp. Topping out at 160. I don't think gasification is happening.  I am taking as much info from this site to help with the problem.  How much does this thermocouple interfere with this process? Also, what is a good typical combustion chamber reading. Current reading is 2.51. Any help is appreciated.

[rpote]

not sure on error code. Best to call Central Boiler, they are great about helping with troubleshooting issues like that. I find when my wood is stacked too tight in the fire box and block off opening for the reaction chamber that I lose gasification. Now I open ash cleanout and check for the "freight train" sound, no sound poke hole in bottom of ash bed until I get one. Probably not a procedure but works to get gasification going. Stand away from the ash cleanout door and just crack the door a little to avoid blowback when you do this with the damper closed. Seems to work well. If you don't have an opening to the reaction chamber in the bottom of the ash bed it won't gasify.

[Chuckolicious]

Hopefully I can offer you a very easy fix.  I had the exact same problem, out of the box.  They sent a new thermocoupler, replaced, same problem.  My dealer told me to carefully check the connections inside the white plastic connector at the thermocoupler, and if need be, all they way up to the controller.  At the controller, the middle two wires in that huge multiwire connector are them: red and yellow.

Turns out the pins that connect to the wires on the boiler side of the thermocoupler connector were not seating inside the connector properly, so pushing the connector together resulted in one of the wires being pushed just slightly out.  It was hard to detect unless you disconnected the two halves and pulled at the wires.

Seated the pin properly, and bingo, all was well. 

Here are problems that can happen due to faulty thermocoupler:  no low burn cycle since it thinks the chamber is super hot all the time.  No wood relight cycle since it thinks the chamber is hot all the time, resulting in gas backup kicking in instead.  If gas backup is not selected, the super worst case could happen whereby the fire dies, blower keeps blowing since it thinks chamber is super hot, and entire thing freezes into a giant ice cube.

Thermocoupler is located in the blower box, towards the bottom of the back wall.  There is a small well with a brown wire coming out of it that splits into two wires at a white plastic connector.  I'll bet a dollar you have the exact same problem.

[Golfstove]

Thanks for the responses, sounds like some of the problems we are having are related to this, I will take a look and let you know the outcome. We will contact the dealer and CB. We are located in KS and our dealer has only sold one e classic. It was returned because the business folded. So we are the guinea pig. We are a golf course located in an urban area; the unit is used to heat some areas of our  maintenance facility.

Anyway,   at the end of the day we got gasification.  We loaded the stove full at 3:45 pm (that's the end of the day). At 7 am, we arrived to find the wood totally gone and very little coals. Our water temp was 108. The boiler has never cycles to low burn.  Basically the fuel is burning a lot faster than I thought and we are not achieving the heat we know this thing can attain. It just doesn't feel effecient.

My question now and I will contact CB on this as well, should the boiler be able to maintain 16-18 hours of a full load overnight,  keeping water temps? How much of our problem could be related to not having a low burn cycle due to thermocoupler error?

Thanks again and I will respond with our outcome.

[Chuckolicious]

Yea, you're not getting a low burn except maybe after you open the door.  Same happened for me.  Its always thinking the chamber is at 2500 degrees! 
As for your question about how long a full load should last, I think it really depends on your heating load: square footage, temp you desire, etc.  I'm getting a good 24 hours with a full load, heating a 5000sf relatively tight house.  But I like it cold and I have multiple zones, so some zones are set at 58 and the one or two I'm in are set to 60-62.

Quality and type of wood will make a big difference too.  Dry, dry, dry, did I mention dry?  I started with some very seasoned, yet somewhat water logged/frozen stuff, and it burned like crap.  Switched to nice dry stuff and now it works like a charm.  Watch out for bridging even if you have the new design with the bars on the walls.  I found that juggling the load 12 hours after loading does it for me.  Wouldn't it be cool if they had some sort of mechanized device that could loosen the load automatically?  I could see the bars being actuated:  they are away from the walls by a few inches when you load, then every few hours they retract by an inch.

[Golfstove]

That's all it was Chuck, I got impatient and fixed it. Pretty hard stuff. Right after I did so, the water temp jumped up to 185, gasification occurred for a while. Then the burn cycles shut down and it dropped and is now currently trying to find its way back to high burn.  Likely a combo of not many coals and semi wet wood. Lots of fine tuning to do, but at least we  are working properly.  Again, thanks for all of your help