SOLVED: Froze up: Where are the low point drains on a 3870

jbeletti said:

Here in Weatherford, we're on a 40 minutes on / 40 minutes off schedule. Have been since 2 am Monday. Some of the on cycles vary. Just had an hour and 5 minutes on. That was nice. Being in a new house, it holds heat better than an RV, so it's pretty tolerable during the 40 minute off cycles.

Erika - sorry to hear you had it a bit rougher. While you have Cheap Heat, I assume you could have still ran your furnace on propane if desired - albeit with the stock tanks sizes??

Hope guys and the cats are staying warm in a hotel or somewhere.

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Jim, normally, yes a CheapHeat system can be easily changed back to propane with a flick of a switch.

However, the furnace has never been right in this rig. The original one produced a heavy burned metallic smell, and suburban authorized replacing the “innards” of the furnace by a rv mobile tech. It seemed to run ok for one season, but then it too produced a different burning smell that would make me choke. We rarely needed to use furnace much in Texas anyway, and when we had the opportunity to get CheapHeat, it seemed to be the answer to everything! No more weird smell, no more running out of propane, no more lugging propane bottles. So we did not address the propane system issue.

When the power went out at 2:30am for an hour, came in 5 minutes and off again, with the wind was howling and blowing snow, temp at 4 degrees, we were already shaking in our shoes, and we were not about to see whether the propane furnace would “work”, after more than a year of non-use — we could have tried, but I was too concerned about the issues we’d already had with it.

And yes, now in Abilene at a hotel for the night.

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Erika and Tony - happy to hear you are both safe and warm in a hotel. Hope the RV fares okay with no heat while you're out of it.

jbeletti said:

Erika and Tony - happy to hear you are both safe and warm in a hotel. Hope the RV fares okay with no heat while you're out of it.

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This winter event that has affected millions of people in different ways will probably go down as a one of a kind storm.
At our home, we were one of 2000 (out of 30000 or more customers I think) of Bluenonnet electric that they decided we had to be in the rolling blackout area. We have power for 15 minutes and then it’s off for 20 minutes. Been going on now for 36 hours. But we’re still very fortunate and thankful and at times mad.
Hang in there. Should be over by Friday morning.

We’re on hour 25 of no power at our RV park in Brownsville TX


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jbeletti said:

Erika and Tony - happy to hear you are both safe and warm in a hotel. Hope the RV fares okay with no heat while you're out of it.

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Not counting on it, Jim. Batteries are dead, everything including toilet is frozen, still no power. Not supposed to get above freezing for another 3 days.



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TravelTiger said:

Not counting on it, Jim. Batteries are dead, everything including toilet is frozen, still no power. Not supposed to get above freezing for another 3 days.



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When you get back make sure you check the batteries really good before start charging them. In 2014 when this hit Ohio my batteries in my 3500 Ram froze overnight. When they froze it pushed the post up out of the batteries, and cracked the batteries around the seam there. I was at work and had the Ram backed in tail against the wind area, but they still froze.
Funny thing is the batteries still worked for over a month until I was to find the damage and replaced both batteries.

TravelTiger said:

Not counting on it, Jim. Batteries are dead, everything including toilet is frozen, still no power. Not supposed to get above freezing for another 3 days.



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If you have Comprehensive insurance on the trailer, and there's a bunch of freeze damage, it may be covered.