Water Heater
I have been pledged with problems with the water heater since I purchased the Motor Home.
Back when I was having RV service centers working on the motor home I had Caledonia RV work on the water heater on three different occasions. It was never right.
On electric service the water only got luck warm (on one of the attempts by Caledonia RV the unit was removed and a new heating element installed. There is no access panel to do this with the unit installed). See pictures later in this story of the large access hole provided for service (I’m being sarcastic).
The other problem is quite strange. The heater worked fine on propane, but if it rained it would shut off. If you opened the cover nothing was wet inside. Once it stopped raining it would work fine again.
So…I decided to take a look, took the burner out.
Burner look ok., just a little dirty.
There was a large gap on the ignition points, and they were really dirty.
Cleaned them up and reset the gap according to the instruction manual.
Put it all back together.
And fired it up. Adjusted the air shutter until I got yellow flame, and then backed off until it went away (per the manual) The unit used to “roar” but now it is quite, quite.
Went on our trip to Bowling Green where we had quite a bit of rain and the water heater did it thing, stopped working while it was raining and worked fine when it was not.
Enough is enough, time for a new unit.
Ordered one through American Coach and to my surprise it was cheaper that what I could get it for through Amozon.com
The first unit came. Note, I said first unit.
and it was damaged.
I probably could have straightened it out, but you know what I’m paying close to $500.00 for this thing so I expect it to be in better condition. I called American Coach and sent them some pictures. They refunded my money and told me I could keep the unit. I ordered another one.
I met the UPS guy as he was walking it up the driveway, it was in better shape but still bent up.
He noted it as damaged when delivered. I called American Coach and explained that it had been opened in the presence of the UPS guy and that this one was damaged also. I explained that I thought I could straighten it out and use it. The offered to reduce the price, but it I accepted I would not be able to return it if it failed to function after installed.
My wife was listening to the conversation and said I should get yet another one. American Coach agreed to ship another one over night at their expense, as the trip to Norwalk is now 5 days away.
The third one arrived and I was able to meet the UPS guy again in the driveway. The third one was worse than the first two! I refused the shipment and the UPS guy took it back with him.
Called American Coach and made an agreement to take the second one for $200.00 and accept the risk of it not working once installed, yeks.
Time to start the replacement.
Off with the door. One of the things wrong with the first unit is it looked like it had been opened and things removed, one of the things missing was one of the hinges. The hinge that was there was installed. In the unit I am going to install both hinges were taped to the inside of the metal frame.
I mentioned earlier that a large access hole was provided to work on the back side of the water heater, in this case I need to disconnect the piping so the unit can be removed.
This is that large access hole, it is located inside the closet, so even to get to it you have to be a contortionist. The image of me in the right side of the picture is actually a reflection of me in the mirror mounted on the closet door.
And if I stick the camera inside the hole to show you the lines that need to be disconnected this is what you see.
Let’s get this thing out. It appears that when the unit was removed by the RV Service center they sealed it back in with silicone.
Man this is coming out hard, feels like it is stuck.
I’m trying to be gentle because if the new unit does not work I will need to put this one back in. It seems awful heavy?
I figured out why it was so heavy! Ten gallons of water weighs a lot!
It’s out.
I removed all the old sealant and silicone. Time for a test fit.
It is a tight fit. The upper and lower edges of the hole are framed in steel, the wall is two inches thick! The rigid foam insulation on the new unit has no give to it while the old unit was surrounded by fiberglass insulation. This will come back to haunt me later, read on.
I cannot leave the hole this way so time to bring out the wire wheel and then some good old Rust-o-leum damp proof primer.
I was reassured by American Coach that the new unit would not require any “Refittment”.I found out that was not the case.
Here are the backs of both the new and old units. There are some differences here.
1) The new control panel on the back of the new unit sticks out to far and blocks the area where the inlet pipe needs to go.
2) The new rigid foam is thicker than the old fiberglass and there is no room to screw the outlet pipe in the Motor Home onto the back of the water heater.
3) Finally the control units are different.
This is the control unit in the old unit. Note that there are three wires existing the unit into the Motor Home.
This is the control unit for the new unit. Note the number of wires leaving the control unit.
Turns out they are NOT the same.
Atwood changed designs in 2004.
Previous units used 120V AC directly to electric element via On/Off switch and set of t-stats on backside of Water Tank.
The design change uses 12V DC for electric & propane operation via relay, a circuit board and 1 set of thermostats for both heat sources.
Water inlet and outlet appear to be in the same location, but there is a problem with them anyway, I will explain further down, first let’s talk about the electric.
110 volt line hook up is in the same location.
The old unit has three wires from the control unit (Blue, Green, and Brown).
The new unit has four (Blue, Green, Orange, White)
It appears that the old unit used brown to trigger gas in the hot water heater, and the 110 was turned on manually either by a switch on the back of the unit or in my case a manual separate switch in the bathroom.
The new unit has separate DC control wires for gas and electric the white (for electric) tells the control board you want the electric heating element to come on. The control board uses the same thermostat for both gas and electric operation, the control board uses a 12 volt DC signal to close a relay on the back of the unit to supply 110 to the heating element (the old unit uses a separate thermostat and no interaction with the gas control board).
So I have three fitment problems to contend with, let’s take them in order.
1)The first thing we need to contend with is the control unit being in the way of the inlet pipe in the Motor Home.
It has to be moved.
What a mess inside, why would someone wire something like this? There is no insulation between the relay and the hot water tank. Everyone know heat is the enemy of electronics.
Let’s turn it around so that it is in the center of the tank. This will allow the inlet pipe in the motor home to pass underneath it. There is still the mater of no insulation between the relay and the hot water tank.
Well not any more.
Now let’s clean up the wiring. I will wire the 110 as the new unit was expecting, using the 12 volt DC signal from the front control board to turn on the electric heating element. I will retain the manual wall switch from the old unit. This will allow me to run the unit on just propane. I will explain this in more detail further down, keep reading.
Might as well add some more insulation to the bottom of the tank where the control panel was originally mounted and this is what the back now looks like with the wiring redone and the added insulation. Note that the wires to the heating element come through a rubber grommet that was not there before and the 110 12 gauge supply wire now has a plug on the end so the unit can be removed easily from the Motor Home
First problem solved.
2) The rigid foam does not allow me to connect the pipe in the motor home to the outlet on the heater.
My first thought for this problem and the problem of the control panel on the rear of the water heater was to space it out further so there was clearance.
I could have done this, but decided that I would then have to change the piping in the motor home to match the change in spacing. If I did not do that than the pipes in the motor home would be under stress. Although they are plastic and would “bend” to meet the new spacing, my concern was they are “older” and might be acceptable to fatigue cracking if put under stress.
Then it dawned on me the problem was there was no room, so let’s make some, out came the grinder. Now we have lots of room.
Problem two solved.
3) The old unit has three wires from the control unit (Blue, Green, and Brown). The new unit has four (Blue, Green, Orange, White).
There appears to be a way to use the same single switch I currently have by tying the orange and white together.
The new instructions are really bad.
So I think I got this straight now. If I tie the orange and white wires together, and retain the old 110 volt wall switch for the old unit....when the 110 volt wall switch is off, even though the 12 volt relay on the new unit has turned the 110 on, on the heater, the heater will still only run on propane because there is no 110 supplied to the heater (wall switch is off).
If I turn the 110 wall switch on then the heater will run on both propane and electric for quick heat up (instruction manual says this is ok, circled in red)
Time to do some more wiring.
The new unit came with a female connector, but no male connector. I like weather pack connectors as you have seen in earlier wiring.
Off comes the Atwood connector
to be replaced by a weather pack connector
Now I still have four wires instead of the original three with the old unit. I want to install this unit so that if in the further I want to have separate control over the heat sources (remember I can heat with just propane, and I can heat with both, but what I cannot do is heat with just electric, for the life of me I cannot think why I would want to do that).
What I did was jumper the white and orange (gas and electric) together on the motor home side of the weather pack connector. I ran the jumper into the motor home and it can be accessed through my large access hole in the closet.
I will coil this up and wire tie it inside the water heater compartment for later contemplation.
So now I think we are ready to connect the unit and put it in place. Note that both the 12 volt DC signal wires and the 110 power is a quick connection.
The unit is slid into the hole.
One finial struggle. The grommet that goes around the gas line. The hole in the grommet is a ¼ hole for the gas line, but the end of the gas line has the connector nut on it. What some past RV Service center did was cut the old one so that they could put it on. What I did was use two needle nose pliers to stretch the opening in the grommet open far enough to slide over the connector nut.
This effort did not go unrewarded. In one of many attempts one of the needle nose pliers slipped and hit me in the chin and I now have a badge of honor for my efforts.
Now I have to use the large access hole to connect up the pipes in the motor home to the hot water heater.
Everything fit! I filled the freshwater tank with water, and ran the onboard pump to fill the hot water tank. No leaks. I hooked up city water from my house (more pressure). No leaks.
I fired up the range to purge the air out of the propane system.
I turn the hot water heater on . . . nothing happened.
I tried it again and it fired up. There was air in the lines between the range and the hot water tank. What a relief!
The orange you see in the flame are the igniter points glowing red hot. I did adjust the air mixture.
The unit is very quiet, it brought the water up to temperature and shut off. I ran the hot water and the unit came back on to heat the water again.
I believe we have a success.
Tomorrow, rather today, I will have to drain the tank and seal the unit to the motor home. I purchased stainless steel screws and butyl tape to do that.
Every screw inside the steel frame was loose. I am not impressed by the quality control of Atwood. I believe all the damaged units I received were damaged due to very poor packing.
This novel is ended.
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