gas fireplace insert

[sawman4u]

Pilot light lights and stays lit. main burner does not fire up. Jumped wires on thermostat and burner fires up. replaced thermostat and same problem. checked continuity on old thermostat and it seems to be fine

[paul52446m]

gas fireplace insert

Pilot light lights and stays lit. main burner does not fire up. Jumped wires on thermostat and burner fires up. replaced thermostat and same problem. checked continuity on old thermostat and it seems to be fine

Did you jump stat wires at the stat or at the unit.
Is this unit milivolt, or 24volt power?
Is your stat magnet points, or mercury switch?
If you have a power pile system, you night be losing too much power, so its a border line case. Is your pilot good and clean and surrounding the power pile by at least 1/2"? Make sure all wire connections are clean and tight. Make sure if you have a millvolt system, that you use a milivolt stat. paul

[sawman4u]

Jumped wires at the stat
It's a milivolt system
Sta is magnet points
Pilot lights and stays lit
Cleaned around pilot and thermopile
Was working fine last winter when I shut it down. Went to lite it this year and pilot lites and stays lit but burner won't fire up unless I jump the wires. Used a continuity tester on the stat, opened and closed it and it seemed to be working fine but I'm no electrician.
Thanks, Lou..........

[paul52446m]

gas fireplace insert

Jumped wires at the stat
It's a milivolt system
Sta is magnet points
Pilot lights and stays lit
Cleaned around pilot and thermopile
Was working fine last winter when I shut it down. Went to lite it this year and pilot lites and stays lit but burner won't fire up unless I jump the wires. Used a continuity tester on the stat, opened and closed it and it seemed to be working fine but I'm no electrician.
Thanks, Lou..........

Well if every thing is clean then either you are not producing enough power or you are losing too much trough the stat. Doing a continuity test does not really
tell about how good the points are in that stat. You could try changing the stat. Make sure you use a stat made for milivolt system. No heat anticipate r.
Is hard to check out a system with a proper tester. Paul

[Centurian]

Gas fireplace insert

As Paul says a lot of problems is caused by volt drop...the thermostat switches the thermocouple which is only very small voltage....problems occur when the wire from the thermostat to the fireplace is too long...which causes voltage to drop..also sometimes instead of a thermostat people put in an ordinary switch which causes a volt drop across the contacts.. hence same thing ...voltage too low to work..when you shorten out the wires and it works ..this shows the voltage is dropping across the thermosat which I'm sure will be a line voltage thermostat
as paul says get a millivolt thermostat or shorten the length of the wire (if possible) or increase the size of the wire

[thurst]

hmmmm.... what else could it be