douglitas

heater was R&Rd and new blower installed just a few months ago. RV repair shop who did the work (and to whom I have complained about heater behavior) said it was voltage issue. I read the troubleshooting suggestions on the user's manual for the heater but looks too complicated for me. I guess I'll be looking for a RV shop that can do the work (not the same guy).

well we tried out the heater last night. we have upgraded to 2 80AH batts and had them fully charged before leaving. turned heater on at around 9PM. by 12 AM heater wouldn't relight. I checked voltage...12.4. I turned the (new) thermostat off and then on and it lit. same thing at 2AM. at 4AM voltage was down to 12.2 volts and heater wouldn't relight. I turned on the truck engine and batt voltage went to 13V. I tried again and heater lit and stayed lit when I turned off engine. had no more trouble throughout the wee hours with heater cycling on and off. voltage at 6AM was 12.2. When heater would fail to relight it gave off a smell of unburnt propane. My goal is to get the heater to cycle all through the night without the necessity of getting up and monkeying with it. Any suggestions?

I don't even have a gel batt--it's AGM! can take 15V so I'm OK for the meantime.

"You don't want to hit them with 17 volts for very" since it's a gel batt I guess I'm not supposed to exceed 14.1V....with the truck idling (and the gel batt fully charged) the voltage goes to14.2! but of course that's the voltage while charging. I will have to start taking notes and check the charge voltage with the panel in full sun. sounds like maybe that charge controller suggestion is a good one! thanks for the comments..it's a work in progress! PS I made my cable out of 4/12 AWG and combined two wires into one to get neg and pos equal to 6 AWG.

I used 1/4" guitar cable connections. two little holes marked "+" and "-" next to the battery box. I even found some plastic stoppers to put in them when not in use so dust can't get in. Actually haven't tested these yet but I think they should work. I'll post pics later. Still waiting for a nice aft and cold night to test heater..hopefully this Fri night. As far as Maineh's comment...I wasn't sure exactly how many volts these panels can put out..they are nominally 12V panels but when I short circuited them and tested voltage it was more like 17V..which is fine because you want to hit that 12V batt with plenty of voltage. Yet, the battery's own voltage keeps panel voltage in the ballpark.

I have a 30' cable for my panel. I park in the shade and prop the panel up 90 degrees to the sun. after an hour goes by I adjust the angle and keep the panel directed at the sun. so far I haven't seen the necessity to use a controller.

Actually, the solar panel charge voltage is regulated by how low the battery is when you begin to charge it. So if your battery is discharged to 12.0V, the current from panel like mine would be 20A! as the battery charged and got to the 15V level, the current would diminish to 16A. (at least that's the way it was explained to me).

the panel charges at around 15 volts.(I was thinking 16 when I posted the above) so 245 divided by 15 = around 16A.

went with the stock alt. I do have a large solar panel to charge during daylight hours...245 W...around 15A. We have the Hydroflame unit. we'll be checking the new layout's performance in the coming week, now that nighttime temps are in the 30s. We do have a Mr Buddy heater that we bought for tent camping and actually used it the first night we camped in the Seabreeze. It really makes a bad smell!

my efforts are aimed at solving the problem of getting the heater to work all night. I have a 79AH gel batt and seems it won't relight the heater after about 4 hrs. There are a lot of variables here..but heater's got a new blower motor, new thermostat, new gel batt, now replacing isolater and alt. and adding an additional 79AH batt to give me 158AH. my reasoning was if the high output alt runs at idle it can put out 70amps and charge batt in less time than the stock alt.

I ordered and recieved the 140A alternator kit linked above in this thread...$300 delivered! no room for it in my 87 22re engine compartment what with radiators, AC, power steering etc. Also, incomplete directions on how to hook it up. they only give you one wire to hook from Alt to batt...but nothing to connect to the dash lights etc. My expert mechanic friend says it won't do..so going with stock alt. ($65)

HI Tobias, I am a tenderfoot here (graduated up from newbie) and can vouch for the great help available from these fine folks. I would suggest that you search the archives (function at top of page) for older threads that mention your problems. Good Luck!

Looks like we're going with Dolphinite's analysis. I bought another Deko gel battery 76AH to match the one we bought last Feb so now looks like we may have enough with the two batts to provide enough juice to run the heater all night. I know a great all-around mechanic who did the install of the new battery under the dinette seat next to the fridge..there's room in there for one more if we need more batt storage in the future. During the work it became apparent that I also needed a new alternator and isolater(wiring also looks like it fried at some point but we just taped them up for the present). I decided to go with the 140 A alternator discussed in the electrical forum. the alt and install kit was just under $300 delivered. The batts were almost $200 ea. It's important for us to be able to spend one whole night with the heater on all night. thanks again for all the replies!

glad to see something worked!

reading this topic to research solutions to our present problem of not having enough battery power to run the furnace all night. we have a 87 Seabreeze and we put a DEKA 12V 79AH coach battery in it 8 mo ago. RV repair guy says not enough juice in this batt to last the night so considering adding another batt to bank. Also considering the high power Alternators mentioned in the above discussions. My main question (after reading all the above) is can you upgrade to an larger capacity alternator that doesn't require a larger fan belt? We presently have just the stock alternator that came with the truck. hoping to get enough charge from driving the vehicle to charge up the batteries enough to last the night. We have a large solar panel we can use for subsequent nights without running the engine. also RV repair guy says gel batteries are harder for stock alt to charge..ever heard of that? thanks!

great replies..thanks one and all. I have another problem which is the alternator or isolator doesn't fully charge the coach batt., so can't just start motor to solve low batt problem. In fact the first night I noticed the furnace problem I had charged the coach batt all day with external solar panel and plenty of charge...5 lights most of the night. I will take to qualified service people. I hope it's reparable because another furnace costs around $500 from what I've seen. thanks again!

I forget to mention it is a Hydroflame "everest star" 79/80 model furnace. When searching for the thermostat I came to realize this furnace is now made by Atwood.

looks like EVERYTHING on our coach needed going through... first thing we did was replace blower motor..too loud to live with, (work done by RV repair place) then waited for cold season to try heater out. heater worked well at first, but after 4 or 5 hours, (when you really want to sleep and not worry about staying warm)the flame failed to ignite. I got up and turned the switch 'off" and waited 2 min and then turned it back "on"(had to do the whole thing 2 or 3 times) and furnace would light. had to do this about 4 times between midnight and 6AM. I did some reading and figured I'd replace the thermostat before looking deeper into it. Replaced w/ new thermostat. Took coach out to cold desert last night and had the same problem, though with a variation (which I had noticed also previously before replacing thermostat). Flame ignites, then flame is mechanically extinguished within a second, as if ambient temperature is too hot. Soooo, set thermostat as high as would go..no difference. couldn't get furnace to light. coach battery had 3 lights (out of 5 on the meter) worth of charge. fan worked well.(just blew cold air). any clues? thanks in advance for any help!

thanks, waiter! sounds like you've seen this before.

well, not everything worked well. the good news is we got 13.3 mpg over 466 mi. the bad is the shower wouldn't work and the new heater wouldn't light every time, so I kept waking up at night when temp dropped below 50 in order to turn the thermostat on and off several times in order to get it to light the furnace. i just received the replacement thermostat and installed it but it didn't work..time to read the instructions! RV repair guy says bring Seabreeze in to see why replacing the faucet didn't make shower work.

I just checked the isolator..it looks just like what Jeffrey posted a pic of in his thread..so I guess it's not solid state. It looks like an old Ford starter solenoid. I tried to take voltage readings but I'm not getting any from the isolator. I did check the truck batt voltage with car running..14.30 volts. so how do I check the isolator voltage? thanks for the help, folks!

only 5 lights on battery level guage...not six!

I meant Jeffrey, not Derek..sorry!