Hi I have bought a 1300 watt generator to power my central heating during power cuts. However the boiler will not ignite. I am thinking this is due to the spark generator requiring a large instantaneous current. The thing is the boilers internal fuse is 2amp and the connection to the mains has a 3 amp fuse. The generator is rated 3.7 amp. Have I bought in insufficiently powerful generator? Is there anything I can do?
Thanks
Mark
It's called a 3-position single pole c/o (change-over) with centre off, but such a beast is not made for standard single wall panels, so use a 3A toggle with thick bush (from RS, Rapid, Maplin or Farnell) and drill a suitable hole in blank panel so that protrudimg bush has a securing nut. Remember to run Earth wire to make metal thread and lever safe. You may find an-all plastic gismo with a similar function available from any auto spares shop. Jim
Check your earthing arrangements when using the genset and also the polarity. i.e. how is neutral tied to earth? Some boilers are sensistive to poor earthing and wrong polarity.
My system works happily off a 300 watt invertor and car battery. I'd doubt any domestic system needs 1.3 kW.
Mine uses about 300W to run, blower and both pumps. The blower may require up to 500W to start (3 x 150W). I get the impression that the OP's system is oil not gas so the spark is a little bit more pokey but I wouldn't expect its load to be anything like the startup umph required by the blower...
More likely is the boiler isn't being fed from the generator correctly, either it's not actually getting power on it's mains input or it doesn't like a floating supply. Pay attention to generator chassis, real earth (as in a user provided earth spike) and bonding between them and one of the generator phases, aka "neutral". If you don't understand this read up first, plenty of threads in here about generators and feeding houses.
Another possibilty is the electronics not liking the wave form from the generator but I put that below the above as a possibilty.
Ah - didn't pick up that it might be oil.
Sorry I did not give enough info. I am a bit new to this. My boiler is a gas condensing type. I have earthed the Generator to the water supply pipes. I have wired the boiler to a 13 amp plug (fitted with a
3amp fuse) and plugged this into the generator. When I plug the boiler back into the mains it starts first time. The Generator is a Kipor KGE1300Tc digital convertor generator. Will have a mess around with the earth supply. Thanks for all the replys so far.Mark
Sorry I did not give enough info. I am a bit new to this. My boiler is a gas condensing type. I have earthed the Generator to the water supply pipes. I have wired the boiler to a 13 amp plug (fitted with a
3amp fuse) and plugged this into the generator. When I plug the boiler back into the mains it starts first time. The Generator is a Kipor KGE1300Tc digital convertor generator. Will have a mess around with the earth supply. Thanks for all the replies so far.Mark
In this day and age of plastic pipes that is no longer considered "best practice". Conductive pipe work will still be bonded but it's not for fault currents but to (try) and ensure that things that should be at ground potentional are.
The earth terminal of the generator should be connected to an earth spike driven into the real ground physically close to the generator. You then need to check that the wire/pin on the generators 13A socket marked "neutral" is also bonded to that earth connection. If it it isn't, it's probably best *not* to modify the generator, the balanced nature of its output is a little safer if earths aren't very good or non-existant.
I'd make up a 13A Plug > 13A 30mA RCD socket adapter that has a flying lead to connect to earth terminal of the generator (thus the spike) and connect to the earth and neutral pins in the 13A side.
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