Insufficient Detail in Owner's Manual

[Montana_741]

In most categories, I love my 3575RL, and live in it full time while not moving it much.

But there is an *astounding* gap of information between that provided in the owner's manual and that provided by the manufacturer.

I am a mechanically-minded person with automotive troubleshooting experience. My current vexation is the hot water system. In the first place, there is very little detail in the owner's manual about the propane/changeover, and I don't understand the degree to which it might changeover itself. So when a tank ran out the other day, I manually switched to the other. Everything propane adapted nicely, I don't have electricity except for an external generator and run the fridge on auto, i.e..

The hot water heater, OTOH, doesn't seem to be responding. The monitor has one of those little lights that I believe stays out when the system is in operation.

I can hear the heater pilot light the gas when I turn off the heater, wait, and restart. But the light never goes out, and the water isn't getting hot.

How hard would it be to describe the procedure *somewhere*? I realize there are different heaters and monitor panels out there. But c'mon, you guys, some of us really depend on your systems working and are not afraid to RTFB (read the book)!

Nobody told me that it's necessary to deep-charge the battery for quite a while before it doesn't run down immediately overnight (when boondocking) for instance.

No where is there information about marine batteries and how they differ from regular auto batteries. No fill line inside the cells--when the 12v lights started staying dim, I realized it had been a month and added distilled water--but how high? To the height of the cells? I thought from my auto experience that it's only necesssary to cover the plates.

This baby is a power hog (50 amp), and it's hard to figure out what is draining the system overnight.

It would really be nice to have a plumbing schematic.

I guess I'll try one more time to glean the tiniest bit of info out of the manufacturer's guide to the hot water heater--all of the manuals seem aimed at installers rather than us maintainers...

Lynne