Front burner , yellow, flaring flames and sooty pans

Clean the burner injectors , Check burner pressure. may be to low causing soot . Lack of air or low pressure can cause soot .

Ream out all the orifices and air venturi holes on the burner, adjust the air-ahutter, the air-shutter is usually nearer the valve/knob than to the burner. Yellow flame is an imbalance of fuel to oxygen and is creating Carbon Monoxide and not burning cleanly... this is the same problem that can make a furnace deadly. Blue flame=neutral flame.

I presume you're talking about a gas furnace, even tho the title says Rheem gas water heater. Either way, it works the same for both.

Any black coloring on the heat exchanger is *not* from overheating. Black is from a sooty flame caused by a mis-adjusted burner. (In fact, a sooty flame is less hot). There is an adjustable "air intake plate" for air to enter the burner where the gas enters the burner. A proper flame is made by adjusting this air opening so the proper gas/air mixture feeds into the burner. If the air vent is closed too much it produces a sooty flame.
The age of the furnace is the most important aspect, and that helpful to determine a likely condition of the heat exchanger and burners. Other than a badly adjusted flame, the main thing to watch for is a badly rusted out heat exchanger. But black does not mean rust.

First, check the burner for grease build up or a build up of grease in the grease pan under the burners.
Also look for rust thru or blow out on that specific burner. If it's rusted through, it will have to be replaced. Also, a build up of grease on the flame tamer will mimic a burner flare up.

Hope this helps you troubleshoot and solve the problem. Thanks for choosing FixYa.

From what you described, the burner needs to be removed and cleaned and the air shutter adjustment needs to be readjusted. After cleaning and replacing the burner, you can light the unit and then start adjusting the air shutter, until the flames are blue with yellow or orange tips.

Hope this helped you.

Are the burner flames diminishing as you turn on additional burners? In other words, is the flame size correct when one burner is lit, but too small when several burners are lit? Is the flame a nice blue color or yellow? If yellow, adjust each burner's air shutter at the end over each orifice. Have you tried adjusting the pressure on your propane regulator? (If it's red, don't mess with it) If it's a silver regulator and has a center cap, you can remove the cap to adjust the screw inside, by turning it clockwise in 1/4 intervals until the desired flame size has been reached. It's also possible that your burners have corroded closed somewhat. Do you have cast iron or stainless steel burners? Cast iron burners tend to corrode shut over the years due to moisture. Stainless steel burners just tend to rust away and flake, but usually become flare ups or out of control flames. Anyway, that gives you some things to look at. Hope it helps. Douglas

if the flare-up is yellow, it is flakes of ash burning off. if you take apart the burner and the pipe leading to the burner and shake the black powder-y stuff out of it, the yellow flare-up will stop.

You may need to resize the orifice, sounds to me like it is too big. If you have an adjustable orifice try tightening it down a quarter turn at a time till that flame turn pretty. Leave that shutter wide open till you start getting a blue flame. Make sure you have no cob webs blocking the orifice.Blow out and remove all rust from the burner.

If you need further help, reach me via phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/dan_73bbd84fe1d95b61

The conversion was not done correctly.
Either wrong parts or incorrect adjustments to air flow.

you have to adjust the air intake holes at the valves. this will give you a blue flame.