SIT 885 (886 or similar) Proflame gas fireplace valve

[webbeing]

Hello,

Is anyone here familiar with SIT 885 (886 or similar) Proflame gas fireplace valve? If yes, what is the voltage range that the main valve solenoid (the one with pink connector) can tolerate?

Thanks.

[ashtree]

I am going to try and take a stab at it, the main coil should be 5 VDC for 2 seconds, then .5 after. trying to rely on memory but pink wire some reason is coming back to the comfort control valve, or split flow valve and I believe it either open or closes, but may be wrong. As far as tolerating haven't had too many spikes in my time working on them that would fault them, believe the control board fuse would blow but again never open system and crossed wires or mismatched molexes to find out. Looking at your picture, I don't think I ever took a coil off like that before, never replaced just the coil either the whole valve and stepper or either or.

[webbeing]

Thank you for replying.

Yes, it’s a 5v DC solenoid in Proflame valve 885 by SIT. It’s in an Avalon Eden by Travis industry. There are two of them on this gas valve. The exact same solenoid (controlling the main valve) fail (open) 3 times in the same fireplace that I bought new for about 8.5 years. Each time the entire valve ($200-$300 plus labor) had to be replaced (per manufacturer) which required almost complete disassembled of the fireplace. This is the 4th times, ridiculous!

I could not wait (1 month) for the tech, so I took the two (one from previous failure that I saved) solenoids apart. One solenoid had coil’s wire disconnect (hence open) at the terminal. The other fail due to a break in the coil wire after about 10 turns in (I unwounded it). The coil wire’s diameter is just about the size of a human hair.

I resoldered one of the coil and that solenoid works fine now. Incidentally the two solenoids on the valve are the same, differ only by the blade terminal. Why is SIT (Italian are not known for reliability engineering) not allowing replacement of these solenoid? Perhaps due to their shoddy engineering of having only two machined screws to secure the solenoid through low tolerance screw holes, which potentially lead to leakage (or block) if one is not careful? Two screws aren’t enough to press down on 0-ring for secure seal with more than one R&R.

I can not believe there aren’t more (these solenoids are in many valve) consumers experiencing this problem, unless it happens only in the Avalon Eden model which now discontinue after 9 years of production. If a consumer is attempting to repair the solenoid as I do, make sure to have a very good (high sensitive, fast respond) gas leak detector (about $100-$150) to detect leakage after re-installing solenoid.

[ashtree]

your braver than me to open up a valve, was a tech for a dealer and after a valve or two would just replace tray, most would go down due to moisture/floods/containments/sediments (have to admit to parts changing after exhausting tech support or techin' it out as much as possible, troubleshooting diagram/tree from factory manuals) Remember the reps sometimes would say its just an "environmental problem" which meant start from scratch because all available testing didn't rendered a traceable fault or explanation. Which only happened only a handful of times in a decade. cool that you found the fault.