Troubleshooting Suburban Water heater not sparking to ignite

The electrode, as you know, needs to be quite close to the burner. 3/16 inch or so. The burner itself needs to be well grounded for the spark to happen. Check with your multimeter to see that the burner is well grounded. If there is a lot of rust or loose connections, that could be the cause. If grounding is questionable you can route a ground wire there and see if the spark will jump to it.


Does the gas valve open and emit gass for a few seconds when you first turn it on? If so, then you should be able to light by match just to see if that part of the control board is functioning.

When the switch is turned on there is complete silence—no spark no gas valve opening, nothing

Okay, good news and bad news. I went to the camper to try the thermostat reset, check the switch and clean the spark electrodes. I went inside to turn the switch on, turned it on and the red light came on as expected. As I always do, I then hurried outside to check the sparker. It was working!! Having done nothing, it started working! I'm supposed to be happy except now how do I troubleshoot it since it's working? Something went haywire. I tried to turn on and off the propane side of the heater multiple times over a couple of hours. Now the switch was off for two days and when turned back on it worked. Is there a shutout circuit that if it hasn't ignited over so many tries that it will stop trying for X hours? Maybe I caught it at the wrong time. It has every once in a while (very seldom) had the red light turn on and I have to turn it off then back on and everything goes back to normal. This time though nothing would happen no matter what I did.

You didn't cool the WH down enough the other day?

I shut off the electric element and ran water until it was cold. Waited around ten minutes and then tried again. Nothing. Maybe it takes even longer for the thermostat to reset but when you’re using the hot water in normal conditions, the propane will come back on while the hot water is still running but the tank temp is dropping. So it seems I waited plenty long.

howardwheeler wrote:
Okay, good news and bad news. I went to the camper to try the thermostat reset, check the switch and clean the spark electrodes. I went inside to turn the switch on, turned it on and the red light came on as expected. As I always do, I then hurried outside to check the sparker. It was working!! Having done nothing, it started working!

When the ignitor board is trying to decide if its crapping the bed or not, that is what it sometimes does. It will work........then it will work intermittently, then eventually it will be toast.

I have replaced quite a few recently and every single one looked like this. They'll make it beyond warranty but then poof.

So the only way to tell is to access the board and take a look. I’ll have to recruit one of my more flexible grandkids to get up in the back of the storage bay to access the board. I think it’s time for a thorough tuneup on the hot water heater. I’ve got the anode rod to replace and am just going to go over the whole thing. Thanks

Air in the gas line, cleared when you tried it many times? Refilled the propane tank lately? It could get air in the WH line but still be ok for the stove, eg.

Okay. If there was an interruption of propane flow, is there a lock out feature that would prevent it from doing anything for a few hours?