Atwood 10 gas/electric direct ignition water heater

Well to wrap up my little tale of woe. I began following all the helpful tips I got on here and reading the leaks, googling, youtube, etc. Then I went out with my multimeter, proding and poking here and there. I followed advice I got somewhere to use a pencil eraser on the connection on the control board. I took off all the connections and tried to clean them off and put them back. At a point I decided just to mow the lawn, came into the house and sat down and started thinking about this thing and I had a nagging suspicion I had left the waterheater switch on in the motorhome. I went and checked and sure enough it was the red light was lit. I flipped it off and kind of as an afterthought flipped it on again. It immediatly lit then went out in a blink. I sorta freaked and turned it off. I then flipped it on again and it flashed and went off. I thought wait a minute this is how it always used to work last year. I went outside and sure enough it was roaring away. Not sure what I did to fix it but as the troubleshooting guide said. Most problems can be traced to loose, corroded or somehow bad connections. Thanks again for the tips folks, this is a good little forum.

You can measure the voltage on the water heater control board to see if the 12 VDC is getting there. The thermal link is actually on the control board. Here is the "Atwood Water Heater Service Manual"

I found the fuse in the fuse panel. It looks good, but, my soninlaw told me how to check it with a voltmeter to see if it was intact by switching voltmeter to ohms. So, if the fuse is good, I am going to try to determine if there is juice on each side of the fuse. I am not sure how to do that. My soninlaw got called away before I could get a good answer from him. If that checks out I think I should try to clean all the contacts on that board type deal. I am thinking that the problem is it is not getting 12volts cause there is nothing happening when the switch is turned on in the RV. Any comments welcome.

Yes, I did turn on the range and it fired right up. I got a lot of gas too, pun intended.

Thanks for the reply Old-Biscuit. Yes 12v dc is On, I will look for a fuse. There is a fairly large fuse panel kind of under the bed, could the fuse for this thing be in there? The battery disconnect for the house battery is connected. The converter and other 12 volt stuff seems to work. Lights. Slide out. I did find a red wire that came somewhere from the top of heater and changed into what could be that "thermal cut out". It appeared intact. I'll go out again in the morning and see what I can do. Thanks for the info

Did you use the stove to make sure air is out of the propane line first?

Is the 12V DC system ON....
Blown fuse
Battery disconnect off
OR converter not working?


First thing is to check that water heater is getting 12V DC power to module.
Power comes from ON/OFF switch then thru 'thermal cut out' (one shot fuse) then to/thru t-stat then to module (brown wires).
Power than comes out of module to ECO (hi temp t-stat) then to gas valve (red wire)