2011 Cyclone 3812 - Any other cyclone owners with heating problems?

jambo.303

Member
We just took our first trip with our new Cyclone 3812 and had to find out that the furnace was totally insufficient to get the living room area comfortably warmed up. The air coming out of the vent closes to the sliding glass door never came out more than cool.
We are suspecting that the long way from the furnace to that vent makes the air cool down by the time it get's there which results in a cold living room area. The garage area is pretty much freezing with a single vent which only supplies cold air. The vent which is in the front of the living room closer to the furnace supplies somewhat warmer air but not nearly not as warm as the bedroom or bathroom. The end result is a hot bedroom and a cold living room.

Does anybody else have the same issue?

We paid to have the duct work inspected for any kinks or problems and everything was in good working order. We were told we could install an additional furnace which would cost us well over a $1,000 if we can get one to fit and find a spot for an additional furnace.

What's up with heartland, didn't they check the efficiency of the furnace before they sold these units?

To say the least we are very disappointed with the performance of the furnace in our brand new coach!
 

Jellystone

Well-known member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

Something doesn't sound right with your furnace. In our RW 305, the heat coming out of all vents feel almost equally warm. We camped this past winter in 37* temps & the unit stayed nice and toasty from the front cap to the ramp door. As a matter of fact, one night my children said they were a little warm sleeping in their queen bunks in the garage, so I turned the heat down a couple of *'s.
 

gpshemi

Well-known member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

I replied to your other thread on RV.net, but like I said, our 3612 doesn't seem to have that issue. I read somewhere before that someone had a duct pinched. Stick a mirror and a light down in there and see what you can see for grins. Perhaps it's a simple fix.
 

jambo.303

Member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

Thanks a bunch for the info which is very interesting and helpful. We have our rig back to the dealer who has checked the duct work already last week... so we are talking to them again and we were considering installing a second furnace which would not be cheap. Not so sure now what will be next.

Again, thanks for the info.
 

jambo.303

Member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

After reading your responses to our problem we decided to go back to our dealer who consulted with heartland. With the help of Bob (our salesman who sold us our coach) and the service department at RV America the decision was made to analyze what was really going on with our furnace. They found that the newer model of the furnace has a high capacity port which is meant for delivering warm air on long reaches. This port had been wrongly ducted to the bedroom instead of to the long reach to the living room and garage area. With this corrected the temperature at the living room register now reportedly increased by 20 degrees. We are very hopeful that this is the end of it and we will have a nice warm coach from now on.
We are planning to take it out next week to San Rafael, Utah where temperatures should dip into the 30s at night.
 

jmgratz

Original Owners Club Member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

Glad you were able to find out what the issue probably is. Hopefully you will have be a happy WARM camper.
 

jambo.303

Member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

Here we are again getting to the end of the sommer season and we are starting to worry about the colder temperatures we are going to encounter this fall.

We assumed the 20 degrees increase would have fixed the heating problem, but this weekend we had to find out that our furnace took over 1 1/2 hour to raise the temperature by 5 degrees compared to the outside temperature which was 60, which is not really that cold. What are we going to do when it's in the low 30s outside?
The air coming out in the back register in the living room is luke warm and the air coming out in the garage is cold.

Does anybody else have heating issues like this in a Cyclone? We have a 2011 cyclone 3812.

Any experience with your furnace in a comparable toyhauler would be appreciated.
 

jambo.303

Member
Please help Cyclone owners!

Our 2011 Cyclone 3812 does not provide sufficient heating especially in the living area, although our bedroom is nearly too warm.

There are 2 registers within the living/kitchen area, one towards the garage next to the sliding glass door and the other register is located in the front of the living room directly below the TV and within 5" of the return air opening which sucks the warm air directly from the register back into the furnace instead of blowing it out into the coach.

We have done several detailed temperature tests which confirm the described issue but heartland claims that "the furnace works as designed" and that "Suburban has signed off on the design". Our dealer 'RV America' who agrees with our findings tried to get approval for the necessary warranty work from heartland to relocate the register further away from the air intake hasn't had any luck and asked us to deal with hearland directly. So we called heartlands customer service department several times but they are short and quick to use the standard reply "that everything works as designed" and declined our request for help.

The installation manual from Surburban for our furnace states very clearly in the furnace installation instruction that NO outlet register is to be placed withing 18" of the return air opening. Any register installed at 18" should never be adjusted to blow the outlet air toward the return air opening.

Are there any other cylcone owners out there which have similar heating issues and/or a similar setup/design with the register located too close to the fresh air intake?


Tired of getting the cold shoulder from heartland
mad.gif


Please help!
 

gpshemi

Well-known member
Something doesn't add up here. 1) Heartland seems to be really good to work with. 2) My 3612 warms up just fine, which is a very similar floor plan to your 3812.

There's another thread around here showing that they had the fan hoses confused in the basement. There's apparently a high pressure side, and a low pressure side (?). The one they had was flip flopped or something and basically not tied in correctly.

More personally related, I was in teh basement of mine looking into what I was thinking might be a water leak, and I came across hoses that were not 100% on the furnace. They were only half on. So half my heat was going to the basement, and half up the duct work. I re-aligned the hoses, and used foil tape on them all for good measure. I also sealed up some other misc gaps in the furnace for good measure and better efficiency.

I'd suggest taking a look see yourself for anything obvious.
 

mdhill

Active Member
The heater should work much better then that.
Get a record of your request for repair from Heartland. If it is under warranty and they
say there is nothing wrong and refuse to fix it, have it fixed by a good shop and ask
for reimbursement from Heartland. What good is a warranty if the manufacture refuses to fix a problem? I can't imagine it going that far. I had plenty of problems during the warranty period on mine but all were repaired.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

don46

Member
Not sure what your issue could be, but I will tell you my experience. Last year my wife and I were going to Moab, UT in Oct., we live in MT, when we left it was in the single digits and on our way it dropped to -8f, the heater kept the unit warm and the water never froze. I will say that if you think you can run the heater on battery power your sadly mistaken, my unit was 3 months old and the battery wouldn't last but a couple of hours at most. I ultimately replaced the batteries with two 6 volt golf cart batteries, I now have over 900 minutes at a 20 amp draw which is pretty big. So my issue was not the heater but the power to run it, it does take some time when trying to raise the temp 30 degrees but it will do the job no problem. stay away from the Lawyer, the only person that will come out is the lawyer, I'm sure you can work out your issues, by the way were you dry camping or did you have shore power?
 

blocker

Member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

I have a 2011 3812 and had the same problem. I pulled the acess panel in the basement and noticed thar with the furnance running i was losing alot of heat due to air leaking around all of the penetrations and joints in the heater plenum.
I used foil tape to seal everything good and it made a world of difference. The only vent that is not very warm now is the garage vent wich is due to being such a long run and being only a 2" duct, I dont think it will get much better.Hope this helps.
 

traveler44

Well-known member
Re: Cyclone 3812 2011 - heating/furnace not sufficient

It might help to read past posts about heating problems. We have a bighorn but had nearly the same problem in it. I had to pull the registers up and remove about 6 feet of extra ducting in the living room. While you are at it tape the insulation to the ducting so that it doesn't just slide down it when you put the registers back in. On mine I had a problem with too much heat in the front and no heat toward the rear livingroom so I removed the bedroom ductwork frrom the back of the furnace plenum and ran an extra duct to the livingroom area. Your original question was-- don't they try to engineer the heating so it works? My guess is no. I was told that it was normal not to have heat in the rear livingroom. But I do now. Tom M.
 
Top