Lastly, be VERY careful when ordering your replacement unit, in that one has a square COM plug with four pin slots. However, the length and duration of self-correcting fault conditions rapidly grew more frequent and longer over a matter of days. Went back to buy a new thermostat. Now it is one-blinking again. The WT8840 Water Heater Control is designed for use in Standing Pilot applications using an immersion well for water temperature sensing. the side you see when it the board is in place. Nothing on the shelf that looked like the Honeywell. Thank you for you detailed instructions. It lights easily, but wont stay lit. Perhaps others with faulty valves may have begun their collapse in a similar fashion, but were not noticed until the hot water turned cold people dont usually babysit a water heater. WT8840 TRADE WATER HEATER CONTROLS 34-00013EF01 2 PLANNING THE INSTALLATION WARNING Fire or Explosion Hazard. Folks, here is the problem with this controller design. Kenmore water heater purchased at OSH in 2012. Because of the shape of the plug, you wont be able to plug it in backwards, but its quicker if you dont have to try the wrong way to find that out. Youll save money and aggravation in the long term. Regardless what I tried, it was still 4 flashes. I will now start flushing sediment every quarter instead of annually. Shut off the pilot, remove the cover and reconnect the three wire connector to the circuit board. Some designers use whats called a super cap instead of a battery to preserve data for short periods of time. The clips stay on the wires. This is what he had me do: Set the dial to a reasonable temperature that wont upset the finicky little thing, and you should be good to go. Maybe they will help others: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7428166@N07/14153292543/ Its two pins go through the board. + One for DBs repair procedure. You cannot find the old fashion w/heaters that you could lite and forget it. It took a while but I hope it is sufficient to extend the life of the valve. My background issue: The heater would simply stop working every once in a while, with no lights flashing whatsoever. These things foul the sensor causing the 4 blink death light pattern. They require that a service technician come to check it out out first for a charge of $95.00. The seven blink disappeared shortly after that. I had the four blink Water too hot issue. Remove the ivory-colored plastic front of the gas valve from the back of the unit. Many thousands of these units replaced unneccessarily because of this coding error and the fact so few regularly do the tank flush. I called Honeywell, but they wouldnt tell me the engineers names. upstairs. Called and set appointment. Drain a few gallons, a little scale. I opened the cover again, left everything plugged in, took a piece of speaker wire with the plastic off of the ends, and held the wire ends to the top left pin and the top right pin for a few seconds. any help would be welcome. Im just saying that you dont have to install the whole valve, but can just swap out the parts you need to make the old one work again. I had worked on a water heater that was in a flooded basement and had to open up the sealed combustion chamber, remove the burner/pilot/ignitor/thermopile assembly and dry out the ignitor with a hair dryer for about 15 minutes before it was capable of showing a spark again. That SHOULD simply cause the heat source to have to stay on longer to heat water, not get the water too hot; 3. The first continues the 4-blinks after multiple reset attempts. I just duplicated the steps that Charles on 29 July, 2014 took. https://www.flickr.com/photos/7428166@N07/14129889951/ If it does not open then that means the pilot did not stay on. Obviously weve all had our issues with the apparently worthless Honeywell controller. My unit was only 3 years old! For two years I would drain out 5 gallons of water every two months to remove sediment. -thanks. Plan the installation as outlined below I will clean up the old unit when removed and keep as spare. Wish me luck tomorrow! If you need to, stick the screwdriver in from below to lever them loose. I would like to pursue the same solution (get a replacement). I had the first valve replaced under the one year warranty but sears will not replace the valve under the six year warranty. The most I have had to do this is twice before the fault cleared. Well the throw away attitude has caught up with water heaters. While you have the old valve out, be sure to probe inside to see if you have gunk/sediment and/or crystals/salts. Should I bootstrap the thing by supplying my own voltage of 750mv and try David Boones most excellent fault reset procedure? Remove cover, put wraps on the two posts and replace cover. Wednesday morning earlylooked on porch for another package I was expecting and found the new control valve. My plumber advised he has been seeing A LOT of these units fail. Since the old value was working again I just left it in there. https://www.flickr.com/photos/7428166@N07/13946540277/. will light up but is not, Honeywell 24v waterheater. Ignite pilot then rotate to hot. Tonight I came home to the 4 blink code again No problem Ill just reset it one more time to get us through showers tonight and replace it tomorrow. Okay. Just install the board with the cover removed as outlined. Cost to replace Honeywell Water Heater Wv880b1309 0 Solutions The pilot light went out and we gave not been able I suspect it is modified by Honeywell to be less sensitive to the issue because of complaints. I came home from a 10hr workday Wednesday to a cold shower! The first time I paid Sears their blood money. It may show now the normal 1 code or it may show a 7 or maybe a 2. This worked for me! Other than that it looks the same from the exterior. Thanks in advance. They are the 3 thin metal posts that stick out beyond everything else in an upside down triangular V pattern. I, too, experienced the dreaded 4-flash-of-death failure after about 8 months of use, was given the replacement valve, did the complete flush of the tank only to discover no sediment issues and, as with most of the rest of you, received a valve with a different color indicator light. 5.0 out of 5 stars. It refused to even start. I decided to try the How to un-fault a controller instructions above by David Boone as a first resort since it is easy to do. Think Ill leave my old one on till it goes out again then replace with new one. I bought a Rheem water heater from Home Depot, it had this Honeywell valve on it. These sensors, provide the fail-safe mechanism through which the, temperature control as well as water temperature. Time will tell. Turn the temp knob all the way to High, down to VAC, up to High, down to VAC and then to HOT does this mean I have to replace the entire valve? Where is it located exactly? I dont have faith in this product and may need your instructions at a later date. My plan was to fix it Saturday and replace the entire unit with the new one. It only puts out about 0.5 volts, but it is enough energy to operate everything. Put it all back together and re-sealed the gasket with red (high temperature) RTV gasket sealer. Bought my Whirlpool at Lowes. Air PRO Air Security PRO Security Water PRO Water Energy PRO Energy Partner with Resideo Pro Perks After less than 4 yrs of having the Whirlpool water heater, I got 4 flashes. The water heater is a Kenmore and I called Sears but they only wanted to send out a service worker for $79 to diagnosis the water heater although I explained numberous times that the water heater is OK It is the controller that failed. If it has now cleared. So dont give up, it does work and Im guessing that these methods will work on 100% of the failed controllers if you follow the steps to a T with the knowledge that you may have to do it more than one or two times before it takes and clears the fault code. This worked well. It is . The first time they sent us a new valve for free and my husband installed it. BTW To those who are confused about the poststhey are not on the circuit board or between the board & cover. By the way, while searching for more information when this first came up for me, I found one website which had these controllers for sale for $99.00. He removed the cover but did not remove any wires (he fixed it very quickly). The light started the all is good single blink and the furnace fired up. They may just reset it, then charge again for the next time it needs resetting. and see what the thermostat looks like). Interestingly though, I tried this method two times and each time it didnt appear to have worked as I continued to receive a 4 flash fault code. I was getting the 8-3 flashing code which said to replace the Gas Control Valve. I touched the two top ones. I nervously turned the controller dial to the 9 oclock position, the burner burst to life, and today I have hot water again. great write up, but I cant find this part anywhere. Tried disconnecting the old board for an hour. DO NOT buy a water heater from Lowes. Theres a little white reset button on the plate covering the combustion chamber, but that doesnt seem to have any effect!?! My tank is fed solar preheated water, and so far, that water has been warm enough that the main propane burner has never fired with the thermostat set to LOW, so I was just curious. The reason I got a new WH was so there would be no problems! Looking for a new appliance retailer who values its customers. Turns out painting and cleaning the basement tripped a code 7 flashes. There is a thermo-breaker in series with the thermopile attached to the plate opposite the sight window that may need to be reset or could be bad just another thought. Ill call for the replacement to have on hand and keep the instructions. All that Sears tried to do was sell me a warranty extension for $199. Then connected one end of wire to the metal frame of the valve and randomly shorted numerous positions on the bottom of the circuit board.. i.e. The WT8840 is powered from a thermopile heated by the standing pilot flame. Im not certain it works in all cases, but if it does, youre all set to go. I thought you might want to add this info to your do-it-yourself site. CS8840 pilot assemblies are designed for use with this control. My install is brand new, so there is no connection to any sediment buildup causing any malfunction state. Called Whirlpool, got the run-around everyone else is getting, called a few plumbers who were all in the $150+/hour. Replaces Old . Pre-owned. The manual, and Sears parts deptartment, told me I needed a new control valve at $150. Honeywell and Sears/Home Depot/etc. Then once it started running went to one blink. I too thought no big deal to turn my water heater up ONE NOTCH!!! DB.THANK YOU kind sir for sharing this! Maybe I can avoid the $120 labor charge the next time it breaks. Even though it did not appear excessively dirty or clogged there was some soot present on top of the screen and a small amount of dust under the burner (& one dead ladybug). Gas & Electric Water Heaters & Tankless Models | A. O. Smith My replacement valve had the same stainless steel cap as the old one, so will likely develop the same scaling. An honorable mention here needs to go to Bob Robeson, who posted here as well, but it was his original post I found on waterheatertimer.org that set me onto a pathway of searching for another option after I was thoroughly disgusted with Sears/Kenmore Service, which would be more accurately described as Sales based on their approach to my concern. 5. not understanding this. My model doesnt have a pilot that is lit and stays on all of the time, but rather an electronic ignitor. for labor. Search the page for How to un-fault a controller. 17 product ratings. After reading most of this string I found a small piece of wire between the pilot light pin and main valve pin after pilot light was on did clear the code after relighting the pilot again to flashing 7 which normalized to one flash shortly after. Reinstall the cover. It works! 1 viewed per hour. Holy Crap DB! oops I pressed the wrong key: not 170, but 70 degrees. Turned the dial to low and it started heating. It did not need to be reset (zero resistance across the terminals). Thanks again to all. Last year I had the blinks. Deliberately, maliciously, and probably under the pretense of safety. Pull cover straight out to remove it. I also flushed the tank out twice by turning the supply on with the drain open. This does not seem to be documented anywhere. Sediment in the bottom of a tank reduces efficient heat transfer from the heat source (gas or electric) to the water by putting a layer of less conductive minerals between the two. They said there was no way to re-set the board. With products ranging from thermostats to air purifiers, alarms and awareness to water management systems, even energy management opportunities, Resideo goes beyond installation to integration of holistic, whole-home solutions. The fault should stay cleared. 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