Fan on/Lights out

[Rider13]

I have a 2018 Montana high country 381TH with a problem of the lights in kitchen or bathroom going out when turning on the vent fan in that area. They will go out when the fan starts up then come back on once it is running. I had it in campingworld for repairs, they said they replaced 1 fan and 5 lights. No change.. Any ideas

[rohrmann]

I had a similar problem a few years ago, and discovered the two things were on the same fuse, and there was a bad connection behind a switch. I replaced the connector and all has been good since. I would check behind the light switch first. What was bad on ours was a cap type splice, where three wires were connected together and the wires weren’t fully into the splice before it was crimped.

[BuilderBob]

Like what rohrmann said but also check the grounds for that circuit also.

[Rider13]

Thanks for the reply, I am trying to find were the wires are all connected. The fan control is not powered at the wall control so I need to check at the fan itself to see if that is were the connections are.

[Rider13]

Update: I found where the connections are, they are in the ceiling at the fan. Then a wire from there goes to the light switch on the wall. I re did all the connections I could find. No change. It would seem the fan has a high current draw causing the lights to go out when starting. There are no other wires that I can find to move the fan to. Starting to look like just a flaw in the way they did the wiring.

[Skw774]

same issue with our 340BH, I took it all apart and found no connection issues. I think it is just the fan ramping up to speed and causing a large draw.

[coachgrowl]

mine does this also but the lights just dim. fan starts and then lights go back to normal. I have been saying I need to rewire this thing and have never gotten around to it. I need more circuits.

[Rider13]

I have been doing a lot of testing and found some very weird stuff. In the bath there are 3 led lights, if the fan is on high the lights will go out, if on a low or medium setting they just dim or flicker. The kitchen i have found if I have all the lights on they do not go out, but if only 1 light is on it will flicker or go out when the fan starts on high. The more I work on it he weirder it seems to get.

[TennTom]

I never noticed on my 381. I'll check it tonight though.

[rohrmann]

Originally Posted by Rider13

I have a 2018 Montana high country 381TH with a problem of the lights in kitchen or bathroom going out when turning on the vent fan in that area. They will go out when the fan starts up then come back on once it is running. I had it in campingworld for repairs, they said they replaced 1 fan and 5 lights. No change.. Any ideas

Now that you have attempted to locate a faulty connection and all appears to be good, I have another thought on your problem. It is very possible that the LED bulbs are rated for 12 volts DC, but what you really need are bulbs rated at 10 - 24 (or higher) volts DC. What it sounds like is happening is, you are having a voltage drop, below 12 volts, when you turn on the fan. If you had LED bulbs that had a range of operating voltages, they would not go off when the circuit voltage dropped below 12 volts. This was never a problem with incandescent bulbs, although sometimes you might get a flicker. If you are not having this issue on anything else, I would suggest just changing out the bulbs on the affected fixture with a wider range voltage bulb. One site to try is http://www.m4products.com , but there are others that may offer a better price.

[TennTom]

Well, I just tried starting the vent/fan with the lights and I get the same thing, but it has to be with one of the switches on. Two lights is hard to tell but I can see it dim somewhat, any more lights turned on and zero drop. My guess is that the LED lights don't draw a lot of power. The more lights turned on to that circuit drawing a load the less noticeable in the quick drop.

[Rider13]

Update: After trying to get help from keystone, which got nowhere. I will be taking my unit back to CW this week. Hopefully they will finally get some kind of resolution to the issue. I will update when ever they find a fix.

[Rider13]

They have finally got this issue resolved. They finally acknowledged there was a problem, to correct it they had to rewire the lights in the bathroom and the kitchen so they are not on the same power as the fans. See attachment for final resolution.



scan0001.pdf