Water Heater and Fireplace on same circuit

[Ledney]

Has anyone found a work around for this or a way to safely disable the setting?

We have e a 2019 Puma 28RKSS and the fireplace and water heater are on the same circuit.

Being in the northeast with the cool nights and mornings early and late in season we admittedly like to have both heat and hot water.

Would prefer to limit propane to the stove and furnace when electricity is available.

With the fireplace on electricity it seems to cycle every 90 minutes or so which effectively shuts off the fireplace even if it’s only on for the light effect without any heat.

We’ve also heard the relay resetting when the fireplace wasn’t even going.

[Bama Rambler]

A lot of units have the fireplace and microwave on the same circuit with the load shed device default to the fireplace. I wonder if it'd be possible to rewire your unit like that?

Where is the ALS (Auto Load Shed) located? If it's near the power center it may not be too much trouble to rewire things.

[Ledney]

I think you’re on to something there. My guess is that they made the water heater the primary load with the fireplace the secondary.
I’m thinking it be better if it was the other way around with the fireplace as primary. At least that way we can use the fireplace as wanted in the morning or evening say, the water heater , if on electricity wouldn’t cycle during that time, and then when we turn off the fireplace overnight and revert to the furnace , the water heater would cycle as usual so we would have hot water in the morning .
Now to see if I can just get the loads reversed

[llr]

If you have an inside switch for the electric WH you can probably just leave it off during the day, you could do the same thing with the outside switch, but it is probably not worth the effort.

I have inside and outside switches but apparently many units only have the outside switch.

[Bama Rambler]

I don't know how much of an inconvenience you're going to create if you make the water heater the shedded load, but if you have easy access to the ALS device it's easy to swap the wiring. You just need to swap the wires under terminals "B" & "C".

[Ledney]

Just an outside switch on the wh for electricity,
The only inside switch wh related is for the propane side.

At least I’ve got some options to consider ... further ahead of yesterday at least.

[Greg Owen]

We ran into the same problem with our 255RKS. Our camper is also only a 30amp, which made the option of re-wiring even more difficult. I could follow the wiring to the hot water heater, but not from there to the fireplace outlet.

Anyway, I've done what others have done in the past, and added a 15 amp power INLET to the side of the camper, and wired our fireplace directly to it. Now when we get to a site and know we'll be using the fireplace, we plug in our typical 30 amp power cord, and we also plug in a regular heavy duty extension cord from the power tower to the power inlet I installed.

No more issues.

Here's the power inlet I'm talking about:
https://www.amazon.com/ParkPower-150.../dp/B002QALLOQ

[Ledney]

Thanks for the suggestion , may have to go that route too if I can’t reverse the wiring on ALS

[itat]

The WH uses very little propane to keep the water hot and the initial heating on propane is a lot faster using propane. So we never run the WH on electric. On LP, it uses 12V DC only. The only time we’d want to have the electric element on is if we were taking showers one after the other and with just the 2 of us we can easily avoid that. This may be an option if you can’t rewire it and are reluctant to put a hole in the side of your RV for a 15A inlet.

[jeff64]

Originally Posted by itat

The WH uses very little propane to keep the water hot and the initial heating on propane is a lot faster using propane. So we never run the WH on electric. On LP, it uses 12V DC only. The only time we’d want to have the electric element on is if we were taking showers one after the other and with just the 2 of us we can easily avoid that. This may be an option if you can’t rewire it and are reluctant to put a hole in the side of your RV for a 15A inlet.

X 2
Since voltage issues seem to be the norm these days, I just turn on the Lp a 1/2 hour before shower time and leave it off the rest of the time. The WH hold the heat pretty good for my needs

[Ledney]

Thanks, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to for the time being.
Was just hoping to find a better solution Where the fireplace didn’t unexpectedly shut off... or not turn on at all as we had a few weeks ago because I had forgot to turn on the wh when we setup and then flipped the switch that evening when I remembered
Of course that was the same time my wife decided she wanted the fireplace going to take the chill off .

We know how’s fault is was she couldn’t have the fireplace ��

[Larry-NC]

Originally Posted by Bama Rambler

A lot of units have the fireplace and microwave on the same circuit with the load shed device default to the fireplace. I wonder if it'd be possible to rewire your unit like that?

Wouldn't that reset the microwave clock and timer annoyingly frequently?

The thing about cycling the water heater is that you're less likely to notice it. The local power company keeps asking if they can do that.