ATF: North Trail - heater doesn't come on

quadman

Member
I purchased a 2010 Heartland Northtrail 22FBS in January 2018. On our first trip I turned the heater on and the fan came on but no heat. I tried several times but nothing. I plugged it into the truck and the heater came on. I was plugged into 120V. I thought as long as you're plugged in that the converter keeps the batteries charged. I checked the voltage at the monitor and it read low batteries. What could the problem be? Batteries looked good and looked fairly new.
 

Silverado23

Iowa Chapter Leaders
Do the 12v lights work without the truck hitched up?

Check the Circuit breaker for the converter and make sure that it is on. It is also possible that one or more 12v fuses or circuit breakers may have tripped. These could be on the converter, in the fuse/circuit breaker panel or the circuit breaker blocks typically located near the battery. Good chance that since the furnace seems to run on the truck that it may be a circuit breaker near the battery. There is should be a tiny button located on the breaker sometimes on the side or bottom that will reset the breaker.


The furnace also most likely uses propane so make sure that is on. Two things with propane, Make sure your tanks are more that 1/2 full when troubleshooting and open the valves slowly. You can verify propane is being supplied by lighting the burners on the stove.
 

danemayer

Well-known member
The furnace needs 12V DC for it's control board and for the blower motor. If DC voltage drops, the furnace won't operate.

The necessary DC voltage can be supplied by either the battery or by the Power Converter. And of course the Power Converter keeps the battery charged when on shore power.

So, if you're on shore power and 1) the DC voltage is too low to run the furnace, but 2) when supplied with 12V DC from the truck, the furnace does work, that suggests that the power converter is not working for some reason.

As suggested, start by checking the circuit breaker in your main breaker panel. It can be hard to tell if a circuit breaker has tripped, so just flip the breaker off and back on. Then check the test panel indicator to see if you've got 4 lights on the battery test.

Also, check for any failures of 120V appliances or outlets in the coach. If some things aren't working while on shore power, you might have a general 120V power problem at the pedestal or connection to the trailer where one leg of 50 amp service is off.

Assuming you have power, the next thing to check is the power converter. I'm not familiar with your floor plan, but the power converter is usually located behind the rear wall of the pass through basement storage.

Check that the power converter is plugged into its outlet. Sometimes the plug can vibrate out of the socket.

Check the on-board fuses on the power converter. If the battery was recently disconnected and reconnected, the fuses may have been blown.

If everything looks ok, plug a drop light or something else into the outlet used by the power converter to verify that it's powered up. Of course you can also use a voltmeter to check for 120V AC at the outlet.

If the power converter has 120V AC at the outlet, and the on-board fuses are ok, take a DC voltage reading on the thick wires coming off the converter. If no voltage, you have a broken converter.
 

quadman

Member
Do the 12v lights work without the truck hitched up?

Check the Circuit breaker for the converter and make sure that it is on. It is also possible that one or more 12v fuses or circuit breakers may have tripped. These could be on the converter, in the fuse/circuit breaker panel or the circuit breaker blocks typically located near the battery. Good chance that since the furnace seems to run on the truck that it may be a circuit breaker near the battery. There is should be a tiny button located on the breaker sometimes on the side or bottom that will reset the breaker.


The furnace also most likely uses propane so make sure that is on. Two things with propane, Make sure your tanks are more that 1/2 full when troubleshooting and open the valves slowly. You can verify propane is being supplied by lighting the burners on the stove.
Yes, the lights do work. I will look at all fuses and circuit breakers when I get a chance. It is stored about 30 miles from where I live so I probably won't get to check it out until the rally in May in Albuquerque. Thanks for the input.
 
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