Furnace using too much propane
This all happened last spring, but I never addressed the issue. Our first day/night of camping was chilly. When we got to the camper, the temperature was about 50 degrees. I started the furnace, we we...
Forum Discussion
Dusty R wrote:
It's been a few years since I've looked, but a RV furnace is the most in- efficient furnace there is. It has 2 fans, 1 motor. 1 pushes air threw the inside of the combustion. The other circulates air over the outside of the combustion chamber, that is heated to warm the RV. When the T-stat calls for heat the fan motor turns on for a pre set time, to purge the inside of the combustion chamber with air from outdoors, before the burner lights. When the RV T-stat reaches the set temperature the burner turns off and fan motor continues to run until cooling the combustion chamber to a preset temperature.
It seems to me that it wood be better to put a dampers on the combustion chamber to turn the air flow on/off.
30 seconds at the start and end of a heating cycle isn't using a lot of power and certainly has nothing to do with the OP's propane loss.
Air to Air heat transfer isn't the best but reality is most RVs only rarely use the furnace, so there isn't much to gain by upgrading the furnace.
Example: Last winter we spent around 6 months traveling with a good bit of time in areas where the temps dropped to freezing. This is very heavy use compared to the average weekend warrior. Including cooking, we went thru 4 - 20lb tanks.
Not much room to save a lot in propane with a more efficient furnace design.
