Water heater won't work on propane

Bobby A

Well-known member
The Surbaban 12 gal tank when I turned the toggle switch to light the little red light next to the toggle switch did not come on. At first I thought I was out of propane but I went and switched tanks and tried it again and it does not come on, I know its not exniting cause I can't hear it and normally I can. The toggle switch is lit though. Does this mean the exniter went bad or what ?? I never had a problem with switching from electric to propane. It does heat on electric though. Can anyone help in this matter. Thank you in advance. Bobby A
 

Rickhansen

Well-known member
The rocker switch being lit indicates that you have selected for it to run on propane. There is a little red LED right next to the the lighted rocker switch. It sometimes will light momentarily as the hot water heater starts its ignition sequence. The LED will stay lit if the hot water heater fails to light within a certain time (I think 3 tries within 90 seconds or so).

It sounds like you may also have the Electric heat on to the hot water heater at the same time, and it is not needing to enable the propane burner to maintain temperature.

You should read the User Guide published under the tools section of this website.

Happy Fourth of July.
 

Bobby A

Well-known member
The fridg and stove both work on propane, not sure but I may have a bigger problem. I got a scenario for ya (not that this has happened). What would happen if by accident the propane switch was in the on position and the hot water heater water empty ?? Thanks
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
The fridg and stove both work on propane, not sure but I may have a bigger problem. I got a scenario for ya (not that this has happened). What would happen if by accident the propane switch was in the on position and the hot water heater water empty ?? Thanks

You'd have a tank full of hot air. You might also try removing the electrical connectors from the gas solenoid on the face of the heater and cleaning the contacts. That seemed to cure my similar problem.
 

danemayer

Well-known member
The fridg and stove both work on propane, not sure but I may have a bigger problem. I got a scenario for ya (not that this has happened). What would happen if by accident the propane switch was in the on position and the hot water heater water empty ?? Thanks
Propane heating an empty tank - as John said, probably just heat the air. BUT, if it got hot enough, it could have triggered the ECO and might need a reset on the outside of the water heater. If you turned on the electric element with empty tank, you would quickly burn up the element.
 

Bobby A

Well-known member
Thanks guys I will try cleaning the contact as John mentioned. When I turn the toggled switch the little round red light to the left of the switch does not blink red or anything, that's what concerns me. I've never had this issue before, its always worked as its suppose to.
 

Bobby A

Well-known member
UPDATE Well I decided to completely drain and flush the water tank and after I did that I took off the terminal that John spoke of and cleaned them, then I pushed the 2 reset buttons on the tank. It didn't appear that they were tripped because when I pushed them it didn't feel as if they were tripped. Than I filled the water heater back up and tried the propane switch and low and behold it started working. I don't know exactly what I did to fix it, but between what I mentioned above, it worked !! So I happy I didn't have to dig deeper to get this resolved. Thanks for those that shared there knowledge and input. Hope everyone had a nice 4th of July. Bobby
 

simsfmly

Ohio Chapter Leaders-retired
What we learned (the hard way), is that spiders LOVE the taste of propane. Had a web built in the air mixture tube (that 90 degree pipe) and the air and propane wouldn't permeate the web and blew backward. Melted everything and thankfully thats all it did.
If you haven't used your propane for a while, BEFORE you try to light it, use some compressed air or a thing that I used to use to clean my trombone. Was basically what the repair guy used.
Hope that helps someone.
 

Tool958

Well-known member
The fridg and stove both work on propane, not sure but I may have a bigger problem. I got a scenario for ya (not that this has happened). What would happen if by accident the propane switch was in the on position and the hot water heater water empty ?? Thanks


I haven't tried this on propane, but I'll tell you what happens when the electric is on. We had a SOB camper that this happened on. We kept throwing the main breaker if we had more than one appliance in use at a time. It took a while to figure it out. We didn't know the water heater had been ran with it dry, because we always used the propane side to heat with. The element had burnt out and was going to dead short all of the time. For a temporary fix we unhooked the element and taped it off until we could get it replaced. No more problem and everything worked as it should.
 
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