Hello-I was asked to relate the story of our heater/furnace for all so here it is. Full story is on Arts blog
Finally winter in New Hampshire | arts-attic.com Page two
The Saga of the Furnace Ends | arts-attic.com page three
The Saga of the Furnace has Ended! | arts-attic.com . To us "restore" means repairing and working with what came in the Rockwood from the factory-never replacing a old unit with a modern unit. So last winter our furnace took to quitting around 3AM. Not good. So we took it out to look inside and found a paper wasp nest in the squirrel cage fan that fed the burner. Good easy fix. Clean it out; put back together; reinstall. Ran fine-for a week. Our back ground-Art is a Master Tool Maker of 30 plus years and I (Lynn) am a Electronic Engineer. We can fix things-any thing. Back to the heater. Measured the 12 volt line going in to the heater. 11 volts under load. Not right/good. Checked wire feeds to unit. Soldered all wire nut connections that I found (I hate wire nuts-nothing but trouble)Voltage back up to 13 volts. Good. Ran fine for 3 days . Opened it up again-found mouse nest and cleaned it out. Ran for 2 days. After thinking about it we came to the conclusion that the gas valve was not opening Took it apart and cleaned/polished. Worked for a day. Now I am sure that the valve was made wrong-to weak of a solenoid to open valve. Trying to nerve myself into taking some turns of the solenoid to make it stronger and found out that Suburban had up graded the valve. Price of new valve was to much. Even on Ebay. Went to our local RV wrecker (Bills) to nose around. He had a NTS34 used for 25.00. SOLD! It had the "new" valve in it. Got home-changed the valve and it works-ever time. Happy dance time!! But ever once in a while it would not light. Gas was there but no spark. Grrrrrr. Did more research on line. Found "Dinosaur Electronics" The original board will try once to light and then shut off gas but keep fans running. Not good. Their replacement board will try 3 times wait one hour and try 3 more time to light but if it fails to blight it will shut off the gas and the fans. Great. No more battery drain! Now the heater works every time for the last 3 months now . Heaven! So in review A) the original valve was to weak (1.5 watts vs 3.0 watts for the new valve) And B) again the original electronics quit trying to light the gas to soon. Changed both out and now we have heat any time we want. PS I did save all the spare parts I could from the "donor" NTS34. Just in case.....
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