Well, it’s not like we decided to do it, we certainly didn’t want to do it, but we had to troubleshoot the furnace today. It’s not the first time we’ve had to troubleshoot a furnace. Several years ago, when we had a different motorhome with a propane furnace, it quit and we had to get it fixed. As I recall, a repair guy had to replace the furnace motherboard. Within a couple months it failed again, in a different state, and a repair guy there replaced the limit switch. That took care of it.
But this is different. This is a hydro-hot furnace. It runs on diesel. It’s supposed to run on diesel anyway. It has always run on diesel before, but Judy got up at 6 and it was cold in the front room, 55 degrees, so she turned up the thermostat. Nothing. She turned up the bedroom thermostat. Nothing. She got analytical on it. It runs off the same diesel the engine does. She turned on the key and checked the fuel tank. Plenty of fuel. She turned on the hot water (the hydro-hot system serves both the furnaces and the hot water). The hot water was hot. She ran the water for a few minutes. It stayed hot, so she knew the problem wasn’t the hydro-hot burner, but some control that triggers the furnaces. She got out the manual for the hydro-hot. No help. She went outside and looked in the cabinet the hydro-hot lives in. No reset button. Still no heat. Can’t turn on the heat pumps; they don’t work at all below freezing and really don’t do much until the outside temperature warms up toward the forties. She turned on the little electric space heater in the front room and came back to bed.
After she warmed up, we both got up. We flipped any breaker in the control box that looked like it might help. Nothing. It’s getting colder. It’s snowing outside. Checked out the electrical status display. It said we had an open ground on the 30 amp shore power. That shouldn’t affect the furnace; it runs on 12 volts. It shouldn’t be the electrical power; everything else in the coach is on. Of course, if the 120 volt power goes out, the inverter just takes over and runs all the 120 volt stuff off the batteries. That complicates the analysis. Checked the inverter display. It said we had high voltage on line 1. Still shouldn’t affect the furnace, but we’re starting to suspect an electrical supply problem. Let’s bypass the shore power. Turned on the generator. 50+ amps of 240 volt power. No help.
One thing left to try. We’re getting error readings on the shore power; let’s disconnect it completely. Victory! That was it! Dirty electrons coming out of the campground power source! Dirty power.
All systems go. Hydro-hot burner cooking. Heater fans blowing. A lot of space to warm up, but within an hour we were toasty.
Life on the road.
