Unattended furnace

Huntindog wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
Huntindog writes "All of your concerns would be much MORE serious if the unit was to be occupied by sleeping people if the sky were to fall. "

:h

Honestly, not sure as to what your getting at...

I never said that the "sky is falling" and the RV WILL burn up...

To put it another way, if YOU ARE PRESENT and the furnace malfunctions AND YOU HAVE working smoke detectors you most likely will be woke up and leave the RV(no falling sky just the reality in life that "stuff" does indeed happen).

If you are lucky you just might catch the malfunction BEFORE any fire or damage happens.

When you are not present there IS NO CHANCE of saving anything in case of malfunction.

Additionally if you are storing at someones elses storage lot, they may or may not be amused at the thought or notion that folks are leaving fuel burning things running unattended in their storage lots. I would recommend checking with the storage lot since if your RV for any reason causes damage to the facility or other property it may be you and your insurance picking up the bill (yes, someone won't be happy)...

Let me get this straight. A furnace has many fail safe systems to prevent malfunctions... But you are afraid that they may fail.... But you are OK sleeping in a TT with a running furnace, and relying on another safety device (smoke detector) awakening you so that you can put out the fire.

Are you not afraid of the smoke detector failing?

Stuff happens you know.:B

:h

Pretty weak argument.

The MOST common "failure" mode for a furnace is to NOT WORK (IE burner fails to light, run out of fuel, low battery OR furnace goes into "high temp limit" and shuts down).

Basically after THREE FAILED attempts to light the furnace board is supposed to go into lockout. Once locked out the furnace will NO LONGER ATTEMPT to fire the burner.

Any way you cut it the ultimate end of this is FROZEN PIPES in the matter of a few hrs in extreme cold weather.

RVs unlike sticks and bricks will lose a considerable amount of heat in a VERY SHORT TIME (IE hrs). For instance turn your furnace off in a RV at 20 F and in 12hrs or less the inside temps will be near the outside temps.

In a sticks and bricks you will have SEVERAL days before the inside temps drop close enough to 32 F to be of concern.

To me I can not see a good positive outcome by being so lazy.

You simply can use compressed air to blow out the lines instead of wasting propane and taking a huge chance of returning to a FROZEN RV.

It does not take much time to do, you do not need a huge commercial compressor in fact a portable 12V compressor is all that is needed.

Plug the compressor into a running vehicle (this keeps you from taking a chance of flattening your battery) connect to water inlet with all spigots closed until you get a couple of pounds of pressure.

Then open one spigot at a time and let run until water stops coming out. Close the spigot and open the next one, repeat until all spigots no longer have any water.

When done, open low drain ports and leave all spigots open.

Takes less time to do than writing this (under 5 minutes) and gives you PEACE OF MIND knowing that you will not have damaged lines.

And Huntindog before you jump on the need the "pink stuff" bandwagon you should keep in mind that there are TENS of thousands of solar water heating systems in use that USE THIS SAME METHOD except they solely rely on GRAVITY.

In the case of solar water systems it is called a DRAIN BACK METHOD, it is a proven and effective way to prevent freeze damage of expensive water collectors. If it is good enough for multi THOUSAND dollar collectors it is good enough for me (and I HAVE been doing this for 15yrs without having damaged water lines).

Huntindog, you are welcome to do what you want to do but keep in mind if the OP or anyone else follows your "great advice" they will be taking a huge chance that somewhere along the way they will be in for major plumbing repairs... In any case I am done with reading and responding to YOUR posts... say what you like...