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Motang · 11-08-2019, 07:20 AM

Need help in understanding how to keep the coach warm. Engine is off, generator is off. coach is on 20amp shore power. Burner switch is set to on, all three zones are set to Gas Heat and set temp to 60 deg on thermostat. Outside temp is 35 deg, inside temp is 45 deg. Aqua-hot furnace was running. This was my set up last night. All seemed fine could feel coach starting to warm.
Upon return this AM the coach was cold with nothing on. The burner light was not on, the switch was still in on position, but no light. Aqua-hot not running. Reset the burner switch and aqua-hot is back on. The coach appears to be warming?

Any thoughts? How do I keep this thing running to heat the coach. What steps am I missing?

Gary.Jones · 11-08-2019, 07:36 AM

Pat

well, this is going to take some thinking.

First, let me say that you should not even need to be connected to any power for the coach to keep itself nicely warm and toasty over night. I have spent hundreds of nights in conditions like you are describing while boondocking and I wake up with the internal temp just where I set it the night before. 20A service to me is something that I virtually never connect to so that is the mystery situation to me. However, my suggestion would be to try it in boondocking mode. Do exactly what you are doing and be fully disconnected from commercial power. You should be able to make it through the night with everything running to spec and not have the genny running at all. if you can't, then I would suspicion that your house battery bank has a problem and the voltage is falling under the cut off voltage. You should be able to do that easily.... Run the genny in the morning for 2 hours to bring things back up to snuff. Now if you do that test for several days, be sure to run the genny for ~ 2 hours int he morning and ~ 2 hours before you would go to bed at night.... that is what I call "boondocking mode" and should be sufficient to keep your coach "normal" with no commercial power. Boondocking mode is 2 hours of genny in the morning, and two hours at night before when you would normally go to bed if you were occupying the coach. If that works, then I know your house battery bank is OK and your systems are working as they are supposed to.

If the problem only occurs when you are connected to 20 amp power, then the problem may well be that you are tripping your whole coach off-line by drawing too much current during the night. If you have not wound your charging input amperage way down, that can cause a big problem..... often you will take take the coach off line as well as blow the circuit breaker from the house/storage area. You may need to lower that significantly. I know many owners need to reduce their charge rates on the EC-30s or their Vegatouches to 5 amps I think to avoid tripping their 20A service. If the problem only occurs when you are connected to 20A line service, then I think that tells you that that is where the problem resides and you need to ask people how they deal with winter when connected to 20A service... My coach is connected to 50A service in the driveway so I don't need to change service settings, but I have been in cold temps with 30A Service and that takes different settings and greater care. 20 would be worse.

First thoughts

Gary

Magic-carpet · 11-08-2019, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Motang

Need help in understanding how to keep the coach warm. Engine is off, generator is off. coach is on 20amp shore power. Burner switch is set to on, all three zones are set to Gas Heat and set temp to 60 deg on thermostat. Outside temp is 35 deg, inside temp is 45 deg. Aqua-hot furnace was running. This was my set up last night. All seemed fine could feel coach starting to warm.
Upon return this AM the coach was cold with nothing on. The burner light was not on, the switch was still in on position, but no light. Aqua-hot not running. Reset the burner switch and aqua-hot is back on. The coach appears to be warming?

Any thoughts? How do I keep this thing running to heat the coach. What steps am I missing?

If it happens again, check the AquaHot control board in the bay where the AH unit resides. Check for any red lights before you try to turn it on again.

Motang · 11-08-2019, 08:26 AM

Thanks Gary

Motang · 11-08-2019, 08:28 AM

Thanks, Checked the basement nothing red no warnings.

Motang · 11-08-2019, 08:42 AM

Clarification PLEASE. Does the light on the burner switch rotate on and off during the heating cycle? Does the burner shut down and the light go out? Will the burner come back on and the light as well when burner is running?

Gregory0495 · 11-08-2019, 08:44 AM

When was the last time you had it serviced? It might be trying to fire up and the fire eye not sensing any flame and shutting down after a few bad starts.

Gregory0495 · 11-08-2019, 08:46 AM

No to all your questions

Quote:

Originally Posted by Motang

Clarification PLEASE. Does the light on the burner switch rotate on and off during the heating cycle? Does the burner shut down and the light go out? Will the burner come back on and the light as well when burner is running?

Gary.Jones · 11-08-2019, 10:22 AM

Pat

You leave out the specific coach model... I see it is a 2019 40' Aspire, a potentially unique coach to many of us. That throws a wrinkle because you describe switches I have not had on my 15 Anthem or this 19 Cornerstone.. A couple of questions. Which specific model AquaHot do you have? Is it propane or diesel fired? How do you control it.... from VegaTouch panel or from some master switch panel?

I have never paid much attention to what green light is on and when in the cycle it is on on my AquaHot panel. AH phone customer service techs can answer those questions quickly about those sorts of things, and I have found them pretty good. I usually only am concerned if I see fault lights usually showing pumps that are not turning (failed)

If you have heat pumps and the ambient temp is above ~ 43, you should get lots of heat from the heat pumps but if you are on 20A service, you cant use those (I forgot).

Gary

When you talk about

hdgoldie · 11-08-2019, 10:51 AM

Ours would do that...light would go off on burner switch and everything would shut down. Flip the switch off and on and everything worked fine. Entegra replaced the control module. Works fine now. I've also seen other posts about a clogged filter in the fuel line just before the Aqua-Hot. You can probably find that thread on here.

Matt D · 11-08-2019, 11:07 AM

If it’s a 400D, the burner light will remain green as long as the burner switch is on, regardless of whether or not it is currently running.

The only reason a burner light should extinguish with the switch on is if it has faulted.

Knowing the last service date is important. Others have pushed the service as far as 2 years. In our case, the burner has faulted (locked out) at 10 months for 2 years in a row.

-Matt

DoggieDaddy · 11-08-2019, 01:19 PM

If this concerns a 450D - The cause of one of our many AH issues was a bad photo sensor. It was a hit and miss kind of thing. Drove us nuts. The AH will attempt to fire three times and if the photo sensor doesn't see light it will turn off the burner switch light and go into fault mode. Turning the switch off and on again clears the fault. The lights in the control panel will stay green which makes you scratch your head. You can inspect the photo sensor and clean it to see if that corrects the problem. If that doesn't work you can replace it. Not cheap. If your AH is running dirty that could cloud the sensor. Having a service done could help. Make sure to tell the tech to clean the photo sensor cause they'll cut corners if they can. Good Luck.

oneknight · 11-08-2019, 02:08 PM

As the last 2 replies have said, the light on the burner switch should be on if the burner switch is on, but, the light is feedback from the burner to the user.
switch says "go!"
Light says "OK"

The only thing that turns the light off (besides turning the switch off) is a "burner fault"

At it's most basic, a burner fault = I'm trying but the fire won't stay lit

Generally an annual service will fix this.
It could be a problem with the igniter, the fuel flow, the blower motor, photosensor, control board in the black box strapped to the side of the burner, or a few other things.

budlightman · 11-08-2019, 05:16 PM

We are having the same problem with our 450D. We had annual service performed in July. I literally just called the tech who did our service on Wednesday and told him about the issue. He asked me the make, model and year of the coach and immediately diagnosed it as a bad flame sensor which happens to be a photo cell as others have described above.

The weather here in northern IL has turned cold earlier than normal so we put the coach away for the season this week and will get it serviced next spring.

Good luck.