RV furnace won’t IGNITE, TURN ON, OR STAY LIT? Repair and Troubleshooting advice!

do you have a tricky rv furnace problem that you just can't figure out maybe the blower is coming on but it's not lighting or maybe it's lighting but it's not staying lit it was literally just going we've been struggling with furnace issues since our trip to ontario and the furnace quit and every time we fixed it or we thought we'd fixed it the problem kept coming back our heat cut out in the middle of the night so i've spent hours and hours troubleshooting and diagnosing and putting together a nice step-by-step guide for you to save you time and frustration and this video comes with a free downloadable pdf quick reference guide so stay tuned there are just so many things that have to go right to get an rv furnace to fire up and give you heat i've broken down the startup sequence into four stages stage one is the blower fan running this is the very first thing you need to check if it's not stop right there if your furnace is not blowing air that means it's not getting 12 volt power so first check that the fuse is properly inserted and hasn't blown second make sure you have sufficient battery power right your battery power should be reading at least 12 volts and preferably higher you can check this using your battery meter or get a more accurate reading using an ammeter try the furnace again with a fully charged battery or hooked up to shore power if your blower motor is now running congratulations you are well on your way to a working rv furnace the next thing to check stage two does it attempt to light you can check this by turning on the thermostat then standing outside where the exhaust port is 10 to 15 seconds after the blower motor starts you should hear a click and smell some gas if you do then that means it's at least trying to light so the blower comes on then you can hear it click if there's no click that means it's not attempting to light due to the system's safety features the key suspect here would be the sail switch the next thing i'm going to look at today is something called the sail switch now this is a switch that senses air flow and decides whether it's going to actually tell the furnace to ignite or not and these switches can apparently get gummed up with just dust pet hair all sorts of stuff you'll need to take it out inspect and clean it and then reinstall it it could also be a bad high limit switch this is a less common problem but if you're sure your sail switch is good this is the next piece to try and swap out and if it's not one of those two switches then it could be your electrode that's the bit that creates the spark it needs to be clean free of corrosion and have about a 1 8 inch gap between the two metal pieces if your furnace is trying to light congratulations you are that much closer you're now at stage three does it stay lit our furnace was lighting up blowing warm air out the exhaust and then poof it just stopped all right we're gonna see if it lights oh it lit will it stay lit no it will not if your furnace won't stay lit the first thing to check is your gas pressure i thought to myself you know general troubleshooting for the furnace i never actually checked the propane turn on all the burners on your stove do they have a strong blue flame if the flame is weak or yellow it could mean your gas pressure is too low try again with a completely full propane tank if you still have signs of low gas pressure it might be a faulty regulator which is thankfully fairly inexpensive and easy to replace yourself if your gas pressure looks good things get more complicated it could be the flame sensor or electrode this might be the time to call a qualified technician or if you're comfortable working with lp gas systems you can take out and inspect your electrode and burner i mentioned earlier how your electrode needs to be clean and have the correct spacing between elements your burner also needs to be clean and intact to produce a sufficient flame finally it could again be your control board this seemed to be the main cause of our problems our furnace was lighting but going out after a few seconds after doing some research on some forums we found that water intrusion on this type of furnace is actually a big problem so i took off the circuit board and underneath is a massive pool of water so it was sitting with all these nice little circuits in the water and actually running it just wouldn't stay lit so i am shocked that it just didn't completely short out about a week or two ago i called up to medic and i explained to them the whole situation with our circuit board getting drenched in water and sitting in a puddle and they said that yeah that's a known issue and we're gonna send you up a kit to mount it so it's not sitting in water how about that eh that's just a little plastic piece well as it turns out they actually sent me a whole new control board so that's like a 150 dollar control board that they sent me at no cost so huge shout out to dometic great job there so it's likely that the flame sensor was returning a good signal but the old control board wasn't picking it up so it would shut the gas valve off after a few seconds replacing the control board solved it so at one point we were having intermittent problems most of the time the furnace would light and stay lit but then every so often it would just conk out the occasional problem got more and more frequent until it wouldn't stay lit at all so if you're having periodic troubles take action quickly intermittent problems are the hardest to diagnose i've covered the main suspects already and i would focus your efforts mainly on the gas pressure and the control board at the time of recording this a new regulator cost about thirty to forty dollars us and a new control board will run you just over a hundred us if you're comfortable doing your own repairs it may be worth replacing these two components first to see if that solves it and if that doesn't work or you're simply not comfortable diying it then it might be time to call up your friendly local rv repair technician we hope these tips help you with your rv furnace troubleshooting as i mentioned earlier we put together a downloadable pdf document that summarizes everything we've talked about just now check the link in the description below and if you found this video useful we'd really appreciate if you could give us a like and subscribe and hit the notification bell of course it really helps us out thank you and if you don't mind take a moment to comment about your rv furnace troubles and successes and in the meantime keep on living the life you've imagined you can't figure out maybe the furnace that p made a quick reference pdf that you can download maybe the blower is coming on now

Channel: Home A Roam

Views: 361,125

Keywords: rv furnace repair, rv, rv furnace, atwood rv furnace repair, rv furnace sail switch, rv living, rv life, troubleshooting, travel trailer, rv lifestyle, control board, rv heater, furnace control board, rv furnace troubleshooting, rv repair, rv maintenance, troubleshooting rv furnace, rv maintenance and repair, rv furnace repair youtube, rv furnace repair troubleshooting, my rv works, full time rv, atwood furnace repair, atwood furnace, sail switch

Id: Gm_xbVpDOGs

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021