Please help with heater problem.

[radman1420]

Ok my fiancee and I recently purchased a 3250TS and she is living in it in north alabama. I am currently in our other unit in columbia south carolina and its difficult for me to come up with things to tell her to try while she's hollering at me in the phone for her heater not working. Please Help!

Situation she comes home and turns on the heater the vents start blowing warm air after a few minutes only to have the heater shut back off. She then proceded to turn the thermostat up to 90 and no luck. the heater didnt come back on. She is in the meantime chewing my ear off because she is cold. so i tell her turn the thermostat off and let it sit for a min then turn it back on. the heater then came on however it only blew cool air. she states it comes on and goes off but isnt blowing hot air. I had her go outside and check the propane tanks and they are full and the valve shows green. she said there was some reset outside and she states she pushed it but i didnt know of any reset. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Brad and April

 

[ct0218]

In a prior RV I had a Suburban brand heater that did that. In that case it turned out to be a bad PC board. It has been 5 or 6 years, but seems like it was around $150 for the board and not hard to replace if you're a little mechanically inclined.

 

[radman1420]

well i am but im 6 1/2 hrs from her. the rv is only 3 months old so we will have to figure out something until i can get over there and look at it.

Thanks,

 

[v92c]

It sounds like she is out of propane. The unit should come on when the thermostat is first turned on, then when it senses that it does have propane it will shut off.

Good Luck
Tony

 

[v92c]

PS I have two $20 electric heaters from Lowes that will keep my RV comfortable. I saw the same 1500 watt heaters at Walmart tonight.

 

[jpmorgan37]

It sure sounds like your propane tank is either turned off or empty. Does the stove work and is the refrigerator showing on gas or electric? What about the hot water heater, is it on propane or electric? If you have propane and everything else works, then you need to contact your dealer or Heartland customer service and get a service man out to look at the unit. In the meantime, the electric heaters from Walmart are a great idea.

 

[Forrest Fetherolf]

My bet...........no propane. Mine did the same thing a few days ago, I had the full tank valve closed and the other tank was empty.

To reset furnace, turn the Heat/Cool selector switch off and on, may take a few resets until propane replaces air in lines. The furnace will shut down after a few seconds each time until it senses propane and ignites.

Forrest

 

[nhunter]

I run my stove to purge air from lines. Once stove runs nice and blue the I turn on fridge, heater etc. Maybe the high volume valve on the propane tank is bad. Try switching tanks or shutting off both tanks for 10-20 seconds and check both tank connections.

 

[vangoes]

My furnace acted the same way last winter the next morning just after filling both propane tanks. Apparently there was moisture in the tanks and the regulator must have frozen up. Took hair dryer to regulator and all was normal.

 

[rustyone]

Two things that have happened to me. In my last rig, I had removed one tank to have it filled. That evening it was chilly so thought I would run the furnace. It would not light, tried everything to get it going but had no luck. I noticed even though the other tank was completely filled the red band showed on the gauge. Since I had tried every thing I could think of, I put the empty tank back. The gauge showed green and the furnace lite just like it supose to.

Second thing is there is a small bleed screw on the side of the valve, open it and let some gas escape. I guess sometimes the safety shutoff inside the tank gets in the wrong position and by letting some gas out you put it back in the correct position. When this happens to me gas appliances only receive a small amount of gas and they won't fire right. If the tank has fallen on its side, I always do this.

Hope this helps,
Rusty

 

[Eduardo37]

Heater not working

I'm having the same problem. My blower comes on, runs for about 15 or 20 seconds, fire never lights, blower turns off. It worked one day, not the next. The stove worked fine, didn't switch to gas for fridge or water heater to check that, but switched tanks anyway. (And I'm using the stove to cook with on a fairly regular basis, so I know the gas is good). Went outside and reseated connector on the circuit board, no luck there. After three days, I took a long weekend trip, fridge switched to gas and ran fine.

My son had the same problem on his trailer. The dealer he took it to found dirt dobbers had built a nest and blocked the pilot jet. ($300 labor charge). I have heard also that spiders like the smell of propane and will sometimes block that pilot jet. If the weather ever clears up enough for me to tear into it, I'm going to look for those things before going to the dealer.

 

[linuxkidd]

Sorry to post on an old thread, but I had this exact same problem. My heater would turn on for 15 to 30 seconds, then shut off and go into 'lock-out' mode. This requires turning off the heat completely, and then turning it back on to clear. Only problem was that even after this 'reset' cycle.. it still did the same thing.

I had a tech come out and check things.. He fixed it w/o really doing much so I only got charged the cost of the service call.. the problem was a Limit switch.

If you take out whatever is needed to get to the back side of the furnace ( not the side on the outside of the RV ), there will be a screw or two holding on a cover. If you remove those and pull the cover aside, there's a limit switch inside there. It reads the temp of the air that comes out of the heater to be pushed into your RV. On my unit, the wires that went to that switch were loose. He pushed on them with a tester and that was enough to re-seat them. Furnace has been working fine every since.

LK

 

[radman1420]

Well after many frustrating months of on and off use and then the Rv sitting for a year we are back to full timing again. The first week to setup the heater was back to the same old on and off routine. I finally called a service tech and he told me he would be out that afternoon. So to save some labor hours I went ahead and unscrewed the exterior panel and exposed the blower so he could walk right up start testing and get me some heat. Long story short tech didnt show so I left the panel off overnight to dry out since I saw some moisture in there and alot of rust. Tech came the next afternoon and told me to turn on the heater and it fired right up! I'm thinking you have to be kidding me. We ended up finding a leaking shower line after the tech was suspicious of the rust and moisture and he felt the board was the problem. He tightened the shower line and the leak was gone and the heater hasnt given a problem since. The tech said the boards act really funny with moisture and I would probably want to replace it in the future.

 

[jbeletti]

Hi radman and welcome back to this thread 3 years after you posted in it. Thanks for letting us know about your mystery, solved for now. There are some RV issues that can really be vexing. Water leaks are one, refers are another and I suppose furnaces can drive you nuts too. I remember another user last year had a year long battle with his furnace. I forget the fix on his but it took forever to get it figured out.

Thanks again for sharing and happy camping.

Jim