How to Reset Rheem Furnace Error Codes

Resetting a Rheem furnace means three different things on three generations of control: the legacy four-LED boards have no codes to clear at all, the mainstream 7-segment boards clear condition codes when the condition ends and time out their lockouts on documented clocks, and the communicating dual-display models add a pushbutton status menu and EcoNet fault history that should be read before anything is cleared. This guide covers each generation's resets, the one-hour lockout (code 10) and its pairings, the five-minute and hard lockouts, and the resets Rheem does not offer — above all, a manual-reset limit that no power cycle can clear for you.

Three generations, three reset languages

Before any Rheem reset advice can be followed, the control in front of you has to be identified, because Rheem has shipped three diagnostic generations whose reset behaviour overlaps only partly. The legacy generation — RGRM/RGTM-era boards and their kin — reports through four LEDs (FLAME, STATUS, POWER, CFM) and stores nothing an owner would call a code history; its 'reset' vocabulary is power interruption and the physical reset of manual safety switches, and the blinking-light guide on this site covers its LED table in full. The mainstream generation — R95P, (-)801S/(-)801P and their kin — reports two-digit codes on a single 7-segment display, recalls its three most recent faults for free on a power reset, and runs the lockout system this guide details: a five-minute soft lockout, the one-hour soft lockout (code 10), and hard lockouts that laugh at thermostat cycling. The communicating generation — (-)802V, (-)97V, R96V/*96V — reports on a dual 7-segment display, adds a pushbutton status menu with a stored fault history (FL), mirrors faults to an EcoNet thermostat as text and alert codes, and changes what the homeowner even sees, since Rheem withholds a first failed ignition or flame loss from the homeowner display until it has happened three times in one heat call. The practical consequence: a reset procedure quoted without its generation is a coin toss. 'Cycle the heat call' clears a soft lockout and does nothing to a hard one; 'the furnace forgets its faults when you cut power' is true of the single-display boards' week-old buffer and false in spirit on communicating models, whose status menu keeps six faults across 168 powered hours. The sections below therefore take the generations in turn wherever they differ, and state the shared rules — fix first, reset once, judge by a full cycle — where they agree.

Legacy LED boards: resetting a control that keeps no codes

On the legacy four-LED generation there is nothing to 'clear' in the modern sense: the STATUS LED blinks the fault that is present now (its short table — 1 blink ignition failure/1-hour lockout, 2 pressure switch stuck open, 3 limit switch open, 4 pressure switch stuck closed, 5 not applicable, 6 line and neutral reversed — is laid out in this site's blinking-light guide), and when the condition ends, the report ends. Resetting on this generation therefore means exactly two things. The first is power interruption for the one lockout the table names: the 1-blink ignition-failure lockout is a one-hour lockout, and Rheem's troubleshooting guidance for this era directs the same remedy owners still use — shut off main power to the unit, wait, and restore power — after the cause has been addressed; a furnace whose gas was off for other work may light cleanly on that single retest, while one that walks back to 1 blink has replicated its fault and needs the ignition diagnosis, not a second interruption. The second meaning of 'reset' on these boards is physical and belongs to the safeties: a tripped roll-out/limit device of the manual-reset type is reset at the switch, by hand, after its cause is corrected — no power cycle reaches it, on this generation or any other. What the legacy boards do not have is equally instructive: no stored-history playback to preserve, no status menu to read, and no distinction between soft and hard lockouts to trip over. If your furnace blinks rather than displaying digits, work from its own door chart and the blinking guide; do not import the two-digit reset rules below onto a board that has never heard of code 10.

Mainstream 7-segment boards: condition codes, and what a power cycle actually does

On the single-display generation, most codes are not lockouts and have no reset procedure at all: they are live reports on the 7-segment display (first digit one second, second digit one second, half-second pause, each fault shown at least twice) that end when the reported condition ends. A 22 ends when the limit re-closes on cooling; a 57 ends when the switch proves; a 12 may ride along under normal heating for days. Against those, the lockouts are the timed minority detailed in the next sections. The power cycle is this generation's universal key, and Rheem's lockout text states its terms exactly: all lockout conditions can be cleared immediately provided the original fault is cleared, by cycling power off and back on — or, for soft lockouts only, by cycling the heat call off for more than 2 seconds but less than 20 seconds. Two consequences hide in that sentence. The proviso is load-bearing: a power cycle into a standing fault does not reset the furnace, it re-runs the experiment, and the control will walk the same code back onto the display within the cycle. And the heat-call shortcut is soft-lockout-only property: it will not touch a hard lockout, however many times the thermostat is cycled. This generation also attaches a price to the power cycle that most reset advice omits: on power reset, the board flashes its three most recent faults — those less than a week old — in succession, most recent first, and its fault buffer clears itself after one week. So the disciplined order on these boards is: read and record the active display first, let the power-reset playback show you the recent history as part of the reset itself, fix what the codes name, then cycle power once and judge the result by a complete heating cycle rather than by the display going quiet.

The one-hour lockout (code 10): pairings, exits, and what it is protecting

Code 10 is Rheem's one-hour (soft) lockout, and its display habit is the key to reading it: the display alternates 10 with the code that caused it — 11, 13, 14, 59, 61 or 93 — so a furnace 'flashing two codes' is in one lockout with its cause named, not suffering two simultaneous faults. Rheem's lockout section lists the triggers: flame not detected after four ignition trials (10 + 11); flame lost five times in one heat call (10 + 13); undesired flame detected, with the hour commencing after the flame is no longer detected (10 + 14); a dead blower declared — main limit open more than 150 seconds (10 + 61, on its first declarations); voltage unexpectedly detected on the gas valve circuit that clears when the inducer shuts off; and a water-sensed condition detected, cleared, and detected again within five minutes of the next heat attempt (10 + 59). During any lockout the control will not initiate a heat cycle, though a compressor or continuous-fan call is generally still answered — with the lockout code displayed instead of C or F. The exits are Rheem's standard pair: the lockout auto-resets after one hour, or clears immediately once the original fault is cleared, by cycling power, or (soft lockout only) by cycling the heat call off for 2-20 seconds. The hour itself is a safety pause with a purpose — it withdraws gas from a furnace that has just failed at ignition, flame-keeping or flame-existence in a counted, repeated way — and its correct use is diagnostic: spend the hour on the paired code's cause list, not on repeated early resets that spend the furnace's ignition attempts. A lockout that clears at the hour and re-forms on the next call has not malfunctioned; it has reported, twice, that its cause is still in the house.

The five-minute lockout, and the hard lockouts power cycling cannot charm

Below the one-hour lockout sits a smaller one owners meet inside the pressure family: a five-minute soft lockout initiated if the low pressure switch fails to close after 60 seconds of continuous inducer operation at the beginning of a heat cycle — the display shows the appropriate fault, and the lockout auto-resets after five minutes (and, being soft, also answers to the power-cycle and heat-call exits once the vent story is fixed). Above the one-hour lockout sit the hard lockouts, and Rheem's text draws their line in terms of what will not reset them. Code 93, internal control fault — including voltage detected on the gas valve contacts from a welded relay that will not clear by cycling the inducer — cannot be reset by cycling the heat call; it is a control-replacement conversation after the gas-valve-circuit wiring is checked. The dead-blower hard lockout is the other: the control declares the blower dead at a main limit open over 150 seconds, retries heating up to four attempts in case the blower revives, and a fourth declaration in one heat call enters hard lockout with 61 displayed — needing, per the verified chart, the repair plus a manual reset of power. The pattern across both hard lockouts is the point of them: they certify faults whose next attempt should be supervised by a repair, not by a timer. Thermostat cycling, app toggling and breaker rituals do not negotiate with them, and the hour-wait that works on a soft lockout is not on their menu at all. If your display pairs 10 with its cause, you hold a soft lockout and this guide's exits apply; if it holds a bare 93 or a hard 61, the reset is the repair — everything else is waiting in the wrong queue.

Manual-reset limits do NOT clear by power cycling alone

One Rheem reset myth deserves its own section because it wastes more service calls than any other: the belief that cutting power resets the safeties. It does not — at least not the one whose reset matters most. The Manual Reset Limit Control (code 33, the roll-out switch) is manual-reset hardware: once flame roll-out has opened it, the switch stays open at any temperature, through any number of power cycles, until a human being resets it at the device. Rheem's procedure gives that reset a strict position in the order of operations — last: vent obstructions and lengths checked, pressure switches proven neither welded nor bypassed, inducer speed verified, seals and heat exchanger checked for damage, and only then, with the cause corrected, the switch is reset manually. A power cycle performed instead of that inspection accomplishes precisely nothing for a 33: the display returns because the circuit is still open, and owners misread the returning code as a 'reset that didn't take' or a faulty control. The main limit (code 22) sits one rung softer and confuses people the other way: it re-closes by itself as the furnace cools, so a 22 often 'clears' during a power cycle — but the clearing agent was temperature, not electricity, and an airflow fault left in place re-opens it on the next long run with the same indifference. The general rule covers both: electrical resets clear electrical latches (lockouts); thermal and manual safeties clear on their own physical terms (cooling, and a hand on the switch after an inspection). Knowing which kind of device holds your code is the difference between a reset procedure and a superstition — and on code 33, Rheem intends the superstition to fail, because the hand that resets the switch is supposed to arrive with the inspection already done.

Reading fault history before you clear it: three recall systems

A reset erases evidence at different rates on different Rheem generations, so the reading order matters as much as the reset itself. On the single-display boards, history is a by-product of the reset: cycle power and the control flashes its three most recent faults — those less than a week old — in succession, most recent first; the buffer clears itself after a week and can be cleared manually with the SW4 dipswitch sequence in the manual. Photograph or note that playback before it scrolls past, because it is the only record those boards keep and the power cycle you are performing is also the closest thing they have to a memory wipe. On communicating models, history is a menu instead of a playback: the control's pushbutton status menu steps through active faults, firing rate, airflow and the fault history (FL) — up to six faults stored within 168 powered hours — and the buffer is cleared deliberately, by holding the pushbutton for 5 seconds or more while FL is active. Nothing about a routine power cycle performs that clearing for you, which is the communicating generation's mercy: its history survives your resets until somebody chooses to erase it. On EcoNet systems the same history also surfaces at the thermostat, as plain-language fault text on the active-fault screen and as alert codes of the A/T form (Ruud's portal documents A058_F for the water-circuit-open fault and T059_F/A059_F for water sensed, the same events the board shows as 58 and 59) — with the caveat from the flame guide: a first failed ignition or flame loss is not shown to the homeowner unless it has occurred at least three times in one heat call, although the active-fault screen shows it from the first. Whichever generation you own, the discipline is identical: active code first, stored history second, reset last. A cleared display tells you nothing; a read history tells you whether tonight was an incident or the latest verse of a pattern.

Reset discipline: one clean retest, and knowing when resetting has become the problem

Rheem's reset rules, collected across this guide, reduce to a budget: one clean retest after a real fix, judged by a full cycle. The fix comes first and is specific — gas restored and proven at other appliances for an ignition lockout, terminations cleared for a pressure lockout, filter and airflow for a limit event, the paired code's own list worked for a 10 + anything. Then the reset is performed by its documented exit — the hour waited out, or power cycled, or (soft lockouts only) the heat call cycled off for 2-20 seconds — and the furnace is allowed one complete, uninterrupted heating cycle to deliver its verdict. A furnace that heats through that cycle has passed the only test that matters. A furnace that returns to the same code has also delivered a verdict, and it is not 'reset me again': it is that the cause named by the code is still present, in which case further resets spend ignition attempts, limit trips and lockout counts without buying information. Two patterns should end the reset conversation on sight. The first is rhythm: a household that can recite its furnace's lockout schedule (an hour here, a power cycle there, heat by evening) is operating a fault as a routine, and on the limit and blower codes that routine is paid for in heat-exchanger stress. The second is company: any lockout arriving alongside 14 (unexpected flame), 33 (roll-out) or 93 (internal control fault) is not a reset candidate at all — those codes outrank the lockout they sit in, and their repairs are licensed work that precedes any retest. Keep the notebook habit the history section recommends — code, pairing, date, weather, what you changed — and a reset becomes what Rheem designed it to be: the confirmation step at the end of a repair, not a substitute for one.

Key takeaways

• Read the pairing before resetting: 10 always alternates with its cause (11, 13, 14, 59, 61 or 93), and the paired code — not the 10 — owns the cause list you should be working.
• The heat-call shortcut (off for more than 2 seconds, less than 20) clears soft lockouts only. Hard lockouts — 93, and the fourth-declaration 61 — need the repair plus a manual power reset.
• A manual-reset limit (code 33) cannot be cleared by power cycling at all: it is reset by hand at the switch, and only after Rheem's venting, pressure-switch, inducer, seal and heat-exchanger checks are done.

Resetting the Rheem furnace

Rheem fault codes are shown as two-digit codes on the control's 7-segment display and clear once the fault condition is gone. Lockouts follow Rheem's documented rules: soft lockouts (the one-hour lockout, code 10, and the five-minute lockout when the low pressure switch fails to close after 60 seconds of inducer operation) auto-reset when their timer expires, and any lockout can be cleared immediately — once the original fault is cleared — by cycling power to the unit off and back on, or, for soft lockouts only, by cycling the heat call off for more than 2 seconds but less than 20 seconds. Hard lockouts are the exception: code 93 cannot be reset by cycling the heat call, and a dead-blower hard lockout (code 61, declared four times in one heat call) needs the repair plus a manual reset of power. Clearing a lockout without fixing its cause just restarts the count to the next one.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

Facts on this page were checked against manufacturer documentation: pts.myrheem.com · www.manualslib.com · pts.myrheem.com · pts.myrheem.com · www.manualslib.com · my.ruud.com:443