Munchkin Trouble. BAM!

Last night the Munchkin (boiler for the radiant heat system) started making a loud and very alarming banging noise. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! It sounded like someone was pounding on the wall of the mechanical room. Of course we went right away to see what the trouble was. With the cover raised, we could see bursts of flame coming from a round thingie* at the upper left, more or less in time with the banging noise. The little control pad had a blinking "fault" light and gave an error code of F4. I hit the reset button, and it quieted down... but we really have no idea what was going on.

It's not like the heat stopped working or anything, but something was clearly not right. It WAS really cold but not at all windy last night, so it wasn't gusts coming in the air vent and messing with the flame or anything like that. Cary went out and checked the level in the propane tank, but it was still around 50% full, so there shouldn't have been any problems with pressure. So we turned the thermostats down (in hopes that maybe a bit of rest would make the munchkin feel better) and went to bed a little worried.

Natually, the banging started up again about 5:00 am. This time the error code was F10, and again hitting the reset button quieted it down, but we still have no idea what was causing the problem. I called Barron heating and they sent a technician out around 10:00 am this morning. The tech called me from the house, and I described everything that had happened. He didn't have any immediate ideas about what was causing the problem, but he assured me that the Munchkin would shut itself off before it damaged itself in any case. He was going to turn the thermostats back up and see if he could get the problem to re-occur and then hopefully fix it. He promised to leave a report for us on the kitchen counter with everything he finds out. I'm really curious to find out what was going on... and I want my Munchkin to be ok agian!

*Ok, so the technical term is "silver round thingie with an arrow on it and some screws" but I didn't want to seem like some kind of mechanical genius know-it-all. Sheesh.