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freekie's avatar
freekie
Explorer
May 07, 2018

2017 Class C Electric fireplace issue

I have a 2017 Coachman Leprechaun. Two to 3 weeks ago I made sure everything was working before our 1000 mile trip up to Cape Cod Mass.
Anyway everything worked fine even the electric fireplace insert. We get to our final destination and on the 2nd day its a little cool so we want to get the chill off. I try to turn on the fireplace and nothing. After some trouble shooting I find the issue with no power to the 120v outlet that powers the unit. I don't understand the wiring scheme its using.

There is 1 Set of leads that is hot all the time going into a gang box. 1 set comes out of the box going to the outlet that powers the fireplace and another set leaves the box going to I don't know where. All 3 sets have the White wire connected together. The black common wire goes to this Relay. 1 Wire marked Common, the 2nd is on Normally Open contact the other is on normally closed contact. I can disconnect the power to the relay and the fireplace outlet works. I plug the relay back in and fireplace outlet don't work. Does anybody understand or know what is telling this relay to be on or off? What is the purpose of this relay. The way its wired if the relay is told to be on or off 1 set of leads is powered and the other is off.

Gang box wiring
  • it sounds like your wiring is a little different that the 240fs but the reason the outlet for the fireplace goes dead

    is because there is a "safety switch" that has to make contact when the slide is open all the way so then the fireplace can be used. the switch is on the track of the entertainment center slide on my unit. I adjusted it and now the fireplace works fine when you open slide and then open entertainment center.

    • way2roll's avatar
      way2roll
      Navigator II

      While I am sure the op would have found this helpful, this post is 6 years old. 

      • MNtundraRet's avatar
        MNtundraRet
        Navigator

        "Freekie" will not see the reply. This was his last post/reply. I checked is ID.

        😁

         

  • Well that was it. If the electric water heater is on the fireplace outlet is disabled. Thanks for the input.
  • I can think of two possibilities. First, the relay is controlled by a thermostat somewhere, which wasn't set to provide heat.

    Second, the circuit is shared with some other high-power device, such as maybe the water heater electric element, and the relay switches between the two loads. This would presumably be done as a sort of load shedding to avoid overloading the shore power connection (which I would guess is a 30A connection in this case) and popping the main breaker etc.