Water heater on Propane not working

[G McCall]

This past weekend My water heater would not work on Propane.
The Electric would work but I could never get the propane to light.
This unit is only 5 months old and has only been used a few times.

Does anyone have any ideas on what to check for ?

[steves]

1. Do you have propane - suggest you check your furnace or stove to make sure they light.
2. Is the water already up to temp and the unit's not getting a signal to light?
3. Make sure there are no fuses tripped....inculding the reset button in the hot water heater.
4. Clean the orifice of the propane water heater.

That's all I can think of. These units are pretty solid and don't break that often. It's usually something simple like a cleaning or low propane.

[G McCall]

Tanks are full (nearly new) and the stove has good flame. There is a chance that I had the Electric on first and that the water was already too warm for the Propane to kick on. I have thought of that but did not get a chance to check that theory out. Will do this weekend.

Is there a fuse that controls the Propane operation of the water heater ? All else in the trailer was working ( all except the Air conditioner freezing up)

[lightningjack11]

I agree with everybody.

Light stove to make sure you have propane and that will rule out regulator and bottle.
(You might disconnect the bottles to let air into the lines and then re pressurize the propane. When my I get my rig going I check the heater and most time it takes several trys after setting a long time. This goes for fridge also.)

Make sure that the electric heater is not on and heating the water.

The striker board in the heater may be bad. Most RV supply house should have one.

[VanMan]

Make sure the "HTR" switch (at the bottom of the tank & battery monitor) is on - it controls the board for igniting with propane.

[G McCall]

quote:Originally posted by VanMan

Make sure the "HTR" switch (at the bottom of the tank & battery monitor) is on - it controls the board for igniting with propane.

The HTR light came on when I pressed the switch. However,the Propane never came on after a 20 minute wait. Also I pressed the HTR switch on and off several times.
I hope it is something simple like the water was too warm from the electric, but My other travel trailer heater never acted this way.

[sreigle]

We had this problem one time. Spiders love the smell of propane and will build a web in the air tube and/or the orifice. Try blowing hard through that tube and see if anything blows out. It did for me and nary a problem since. They also will sometimes plug the burner orifice.

[markwick]

Check your hoses where they come off the propane tanks. Mine and others had a bad kink in it, the stove would light and the fridge would work but the hot water heater needs a higher flow of propane and because of the kink there was not enough flow. I could hear the heater trying to light (clicking). There was an earlier thread on this last year some time

[drhowell]

Had a similar problem after winter storage and it turned out to be a very very small piece of dirt, rust or ? partially blocking the burner orifice. Pull the burner tube and clean the orifice. You may not be able to actually see the small blockage. It doesn't take much to keep it from lighting.

[trukdoc]

Does the check light come on?
That is what happened to ours and the dealer replaced the circut board and all is OK.