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Topic: LP Maintenance  (Read 3970 times) previous topic - next topic

LP Maintenance

OK this is a new one on me and it cost me $150 bucks. I'm passing it on to you for free! :) OK you can buy me a  beer next time we meet. I've never seen mention of this in any of my reading.

I was having intermittent fire on my rear furnace. I just had the burner replaced back in May at FOT so was a little annoyed that it wasn't working. I checked power at the sail switch and it was good and I could feel a strong flow of air from the ducts. I pulled and cleaned every contact I could find. Still no luck. A fellow Foretraveler in the park saw me working on it and said he had a spare Dinosaur board and offered it to me to test with. No luck with it either. Broke down and called Charlie the Propane Appliance guy.

He did a lot of checking repeating the same things I did but didn't come up with anything. He then got out his gauges to check the gas pressure. When he pulled the plug to install the gauge he put his ear to the port and said he could hear gurgling. We then went to the lp tank and he disconnected the rubber hose that lead from the lp tank to the lp gas manifold. He said that oil can settle out of the lp and will go to the low point. I got a bucket and he drained about a 1/2 to 3/4 cup of oil out of the hose! He said that in warmer weather it's liquid but in cold temps it jells and can block the flow of lp. He put everything back together and the furnace fired every time!

So this is pretty damn easy to check. Just unscrew the hose and drain it into a bucket! I recommend checking at least once every 20 years.

see ya
ken

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #1 –
Nice one Ken! Would never have thought of it.

Pierce

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #2 –
Thanks for the tip Ken.

Mark

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #3 –
 That actually is an old one (sorry Ken) and is why you should have a small drop pipe at the lower part of a manifold or line, but you mentioning it will alert others. I had one on my coach where all the lines are connected to a made up manifold but I whent and used it for a feed for my propane BBQ. It does collect there but I just open the shut off valve every winter and blow any  "oil" out of line with the gas pressure before hooking up hose.
JohnH

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #4 –
I had that same symptom last winter with my rear furnace and never did figure out why it ran fine except when the weather was really cold, which of course is the only time I use the rear furnace. It must be because the rear furnace is the furthest from the tank and has the longest fuel line with the greatest pressure drop? I'll check to see if there's oil in my gas line. Thanks for the interesting tip that would have taken me forever to figure out.

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #5 –
Thanks Ken - always like to learn about maintenance tricks that are easy to do.

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #6 –
@Scott I think you are correct. Since the rear furnace is the furthest in the line it would show symptoms first. Now that I think about it the stove was acting strange a few times too. Dori would be using it and the flame would be pulsing high to low. This only happened a couple of times but I'm sure it was related to the oil in the line.

The flexible rubber hose looks like it's a 3/4" line so you do need to accumulate quite a bit of oil in there before you would see symptoms. Cold weather would definitely exacerbate the issue. I plan to check yearly for a while to see how quickly it accumulates.

see ya
ken 

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #7 –
@Scott also probably best to check on a warm day. If you can face the coach east and open the bay for an hour or so to let the sun heat it up.

see ya
ken

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #8 –
...or maybe I'll just drive the coach to Florida in a couple of weeks and warm it up there ;D

Re: LP Maintenance

Reply #9 –
We have two 30 lb bottles for LP. Had to replace the regulator the other day and about a cup of oil drained out of the hose from the regulator to the appliances. Let it drain for an hour and then hooked everything back up. All seems well. 20 years of accumulation...not bad :P