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Almot's avatar
Almot
Explorer III
Aug 02, 2015

Anybody with Camco Olympian Heaters?

I know, I know - not vented, no thermostat, so Don Piano please have mercy on me. Couldn't get anything from Platinum Cat guy, the only maker of vented catalytic heaters with thermostat. Couldn't wait any longer, so bought Chin-Co Wave 6 on Amazon.

Ugly color (Platinum guy had choice of colors), no thermostat, instead it has 3 flow speeds - Low, Med, High. I'll probably have to keep it on low through the cold Mexican winter night (I'm serious about cold, it's a desert). Or will turn it Off before going to bed. Because turning it On when it gets cold before dawn, is not something that you can do in the night with your eyes closed. Pre-flight procedure goes like that: turn the valve to On, hold it, click piezo ignitor (conveniently located on the other side, to encourage you keeping face closer to the grill and to discourage those crippled one-handed), then, after the pilot lights up, hold it for a minute, then quickly turn it to High. You think you're done now and can go to bed? Not so fast, unless you want it to blast full 6,000 BTU. You wait 10 minutes, turn it to Med or Low, and then you can go to bed. Sorry for this rant - it's probably the ugly color that irks me subconsciously.

Now, the Question:
Description says "integrated safety shut-off valve to help prevent accidental non-ignition fuel discharge". I like how they call "integrated" anything that simply IS there in the device. This is not an ODS sensor for sure. It could be they simply meant the control valve with your brains attached to it - when you don't see the pilot flame after you click the ignitor, you turn it Off.

Or - an "Excess Flow Valve", like Brasscraft Excess Flow Valve. Opened the front panel - if it's there, then it's buried inside the big control valve with High-Med-Low-Off.

Also - and this is why asking phone reps in a big company is a waste of time, not to mention actual waste of time to reach any live person - according to Brasscraft, EFV valve should not be mounted on the appliance, but installed between the gas pipe and flexible supply line. I could, of course, count few inches from the control valve "High-Med-Low-Off" to the catalyst panel inside the heater as "supply line", sort of. Those flexible supply lines that I've seen, were all 2ft or longer.

So - does it or does it not have EFV valve?
  • Thermal sensor. If cotton-like media is tool cool valve shuts off gas vapor. On my 8000 probe is near lower left corner. I lived with this heater 12-years being on six months 24/7 in an RV. After which I moved to tierra caliente Michoacan.

    Crack a window in your bedroom. I had mine glued on 3 the afterburner setting. Creel and Toluca are both ice frigid in winter and Patzcuaro and San Cristobal de Las Casas ain't much warmer. I placed muffin fans above the heater on the ceiling because it was getting to 80F while the deck was in the high forties. When I was stuck in the Sierra Nevada mts of California I had TWO KerOsun heaters going. No meaning zero insulation in the walls of the house. A 636 SQFT house. The Olympian burns a lot cleaner than the K1 KerOsuns did. The LPG distributors did not drive Ford Pintos. Their fuel price was criminal.

    The Olympian is a million unit proven design with no skeletons in the closet. In the off-season keep it dust tight. The heating media does not like dust accumulation.
  • we have one
    i think they mean that old standby the thermocouple

    if you let go before it is going, it will go out

    if the fuel flow stops and it goes out, there will be no accidental fuel flow when things thaw out, or you refill the tank but forget to turn the heater to off before doing so