water heater operation

[brania]

hello group
I am having a problem getting my solera water heater to run on electricity when on shore power. no matter what I do the propane always fires up. any help would be appreciated.....
andy & ann marie 2011 Solera

[JamesR]

I thought that I was having the same problem but couldn't verify what was happening when the hot water was in use! The explaination I got was that if the water cooled to some point, the propane would override to speed the recovery. Because there is only 6 gallons, it wouldn't take long for the cold water that flows in to replenish the tank to quickly reach that point. Like during a shower. I guess the electrical is there to maintain temp till it gets used?

That's my theory anyway. I was used to a 10 gal tank that worked differently.

Or, the tech told me they were always replacing the circuit board controller that has gone bad.

Good luck.

[papap]

Are you turning the inside switch on?

[Herk7769]

The AC circuit is the easiest of the two to troubleshoot. It is TOTALLY independent from the DC/Gas part of the heater and will heat water with the GAS off as long as the camper is plugged in to AC power and the main circuit breaker is closed in the panel. It has NOTHING to do with the "control board" which is used to ignite the gas.

The ON/OFF switch is "typically" on the outside of the camper (though some use a separate switch inside near the one with the ignition light).

There is also a high limit reset button under a rubber seal to reset the high limit switch should it need to be reset.

The heating element could be bad due to having the AC switch on without water in the tank.

[inspectorgf]

If your camper is like mine then you only have one switch on the inside of the camper for hot water heater. If so this switch will turn on the propane heater, what you need to do is leave that switch off and turn only the electric switch on which is located on the outside of camper under the hot water heater. It took me awhile to figure this out as well because we had a keystone rv before this and they put electric and propane switchs on inside.

[jeds]

We just struggled with this and finnaly took to the dealer. They fixed the electric part under warranty an said it was improperly installed at Forest River. Took up half a day our vacation which was a bummer.