Well, the furnace worked one day. But sometime over the night it quit! And I found out the next morning. Unfortunately we were having below freezing temps and it was urgent that the furnace work. There was no time to waste in getting it fixed!
My camper has the Atwood (Dometic) HydroFlame furnace, part number AFMD25151_A. (pictured below)
Thankfully, Doug Nielsen with RV Doctor in the Salt Lake Area was available to help troubleshoot the issues. He is very experienced in all facets of RV repair and was extremely knowledgeable about the potential issue with the furnace and troubleshooting it. Cannot recommend him highly enough if you need any RV assistance. (Thank you, Doug!)
As far as it goes, there are generally only three electrical parts in the furnace that give most of the trouble: the sail switch, the blower motor, and the control board.
The sail switch is used to insure that the blower motor is on and providing adequate air flow before propane is fired. This is part of the furnace system that provides a measure of safety and although it can fail, the most common issues are that the switch has a bent paddle, that it may be dirty, or could have a loose wire.
The blower motor spins the centrifugal fan that moves air through your heating system. We were able to test it by using a paper clip to "hotwire" the power cable connected to the control board directly to the fan blower motor. This effectively bypassed the control board and pointed to it as the issue.
Since the sail switch and blower motor both seemed fine through our testing, I removed the control board and took it in to State Trailer RV & Outdoor Supply per Doug's recommendation. They had a tester and were able to confirm that my board was dead. And they had a replacement in stock that they recommend from Dinosaur Electronics, the FAN 50 PLUS. Dinosaur is highly regarded for their quality products and the folks at State Trailer were very helpful. The board has a 3 year warranty, too! I did pay a bit more shopping locally, but it was necessary to get the furnace back up and running as quickly as possible. If you are not in a rush, the Dinosaur FAN 50 PLUS PINS is also available from Amazon. (NOTE: For this particular installation, I had to use a drill to remove the brass feet from the board so that would fit properly. I took it slowly and was careful not to damage the board. The feet are brass, so it was easy to do.)
The new board:
It was a pretty straightforward repair and everything was back up and running within a few hours. 🙏🏻. Woo hoo!
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