Economaire range of warm air heaters:

The Economaire is a “room-sealed” warm air boiler, meaning it draws fresh air for combustion in though the flue tube and does not need a separate (and sometimes draughty) air vent to outside. The combustion chamber inside is fully sealed from the interior of the house which is an improvement in safety, and the fan-powered flue can now run horizontally through an outside wall instead of having to run vertically up and through the roof (as with older Johnson and Starley models).

Further, there is no permanent pilot light to blow out; the boiler has automatic ignition and could be ordered with a high performance electrostatic air filter. The Economaire is however a non-condensing boiler and all Economaire models have been discontinued and replaced with the high efficiency “Warmcair” condensing warm air boiler range.

For water heating, the Intejan hot water circulator was available as an optional extra, which was also room sealed (inside the same boiler case) and shared the combustion air supply and flue with the warm air unit.

Despite all the advantages above, the Economaire is rapidly becoming my least-favourite Johnson and Starley boiler to attend. Mainly due to its annoying habit of intermittently locking-out and showing error 6 (“flame failure”) then behaving perfectly when I attend and test it!

Common faults and fixes:

1) Red “Lockout” light illuminated

This broadly means “something went wrong”, and there is a little viewing hole in the main front panel. The electronic control panel has a red LED display visible through the hole. Sometimes it is obscured by a build-up of dust if not regularly cleaned during annual servicing but can be cleaned with say, a child’s paintbrush. A single character is displayed which can be looked up on a chart and tells us the boiler is either working correctly or gives a fault code. The common status codes are as follows:

0 Boiler is alight and running correctly

3 Air pressure switch fail - usually the combustion air fan failed actually

E Air circulator fan fail

Nothing displayed at all - power turned off or dust obscuring the display

Lots more error codes are printed on the cover plate on the control board (as in this photo) and more details can be looked up in the boiler manual, but none can be fixed by the layman. A warm air technician will need to be called out. Here is a screenshot of the chart in the manual giving more information. (Hopefully J&S won’t mind me reproducing it here.)

2) Combustion air fan failure

When the combustion air fan fails, the boiler remains silent and refuses to run. If the Economaire also has the Intejan water circulator, both will fail and hot water also ceases to work too. Both warm air and hot water with this appliance depend on the shared combustion air fan so both functions failing together indicates something shared by both has failed, and the only moving and shared part is the combustion air fan. The LED shows the number “3”.

3) Gas valve failure

The gas control valve has an electromagnetic coil which can fail, and also a combustion control board fitted directly onto the gas valve. Either part can fail and the status LED might display any number between 4 and 9.

4) Control panel failure

There is a number of failures the control panel suffers from, ranging from no life at all shown in the boiler, not even anything on the LED status display, to the panel not responding to the room thermostat and failing to light the burners, or lighting the burners but failing to start the warm air circulation fan. Make sure the power switch on the wall is still turned on, and check the the fuse has not blown. I keep a control panel in the van for this type of Economaire breakdown.

5) Air fan running all the time and boiler refusing to light

This is usually related to the Thermista-Stat, or room thermostat. It has a “Summer air circulation” setting at one end of its travel and this may simply have been selected, which won’t be obvious to anyone peering at the boiler wondering what has gone wrong. Check the room thermostat! If it is set correctly it may be faulty, which can be diagnosed by removing the room stat wires from the boiler and connecting terminals 8 and 10. If the fan still runs all the time the control board needs replacing. If the boiler now fires normally, replace the Thermista-Stat room thermostat.

6) Lock-out with error code “3” showing in the red LED status window

I’m beginning to see this error on Economaire boilers when neither the combustion air fan (CAF) nor the air pressure switch has failed. What is actually happening is the air pressure differential being developed by the combustion air fan (CAF) is too low for the air pressure switch (APS) to detect. The air pressure switch requires a pressure differential of 0.48mBar from the CAF in order to operate and allow the ignition sequence to progress to ignition, and the CAF is developing slightly less than this value. This is possibly caused by dust in the restrictor fitted into the positive air hose to the APS, or dirt accumulated on the blades of the CAF, or the APS losing its calibration. to fix it, one way or another the pressure from the CAF needs to be raised to above the operation pressure of the APS. Use of a digital manometer helps enormously in narrowing down this fault. The most common cause I’m finding is actually dirt contaminating the venturi inside the CAF, and can sometimes be cleared by blowing down the tubes connecting onto the venturi.

7) The air circulation fan failing or making a screaming noise

The air circulation fan blows the warm air through ducts to the warm air vents in each room. They fail with age and no longer blow, or they make a most alarming screeching noise when starting up or stopping, or both. New fans for the most common size, the “32” are no longer available but can be refurbished by fitting a new motor. Not cheap to do but it saves the boiler from having to be scrapped and replaced. Contact me for more details.

8) Flame failure - Error Code 6

This can be a difficult one to trace as it usually only happens intermittently. This code 6 is telling us the boiler electronics detected that the flame either failed to light or that the flame went out when it should not have. The tricky bit is this may or may not have actually happened, it is what the electronics thinks has happened. So the control board turns the boiler off and returns Error Code 6 regardless. This can be an intractable fault to trace as more often than not it turns out the flame is not actually going out. The electronic flame detection process that is failing to detect a flame that is, in actual fact, present but the boiler locked out anyway. The difficulty is in tracing why the control board failed to detect the the flame especially when the boiler resets and runs apparently normally until the next lockout hours or days later. There is a wide range of possible causes or Error Code 6 including the spark penetrating the ignition lead insulation and occurring somewhere other than at the pilot light, or the pilot flame being too small, the flame-monitoring PCB on the gas valve failing, or a poor electrical connection onto the flame-monitoring PCB.

9) Electronic air filter ticking repeatedly

The instruction leaflet that comes with replacement filter gauzes for the electronic air filter mentions this irritating fault. The electric charge applied across the two grids of the filter keeps discharging making a quiet but still noticeable repeating ‘tick’ noise. There is something lodged in the filter media allowing a spark to jump across from one grid to the other, or the gauze frames are slightly distorted. Remove the contaminating item or replace the filter media, and press down lightly around the perimeter of both of the aluminium filter grids.

Other than the above, the Economaire seems to be quite a reliable boiler. I get very few calls to repair them even though when they do fail, fault tracing can be difficult. Servicing one properly is very time consuming too, especially when the Intejan water heater is present. Two whole appliances inside one case to deal with, actually.

If your Economaire needs repairing, call or text me on 07866 766364

Mike

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