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Old 12-04-2018, 08:05 PM   #1
Darrell Duncan
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Join Date: Jul 2018
Location: Fernley
Posts: 7
Gas and Elect.

Hi Everyone,
I have a 2013 keystone high country cougar.
1. I have an gas instant hot water heater that runs on gas, and it works fine.
2. A refrigerator that runs on gas or elect. Problem is my refrigerator should run on elect. but doesn't it's plugged in and did run on elect. until i ran out of gas and now it doesn't work, so is there a reset switch or something?
3. I have a forced air heater that works great, but does it just run on elect? or gas also? and if it runs on both how do i keep it on elect.?
4. How do you keep hot water in shower at an even temp. it either to hot or to cold how do you keep it even?
I now i'm a newbie and it's all new , any help would be great
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Old 12-05-2018, 03:12 AM   #2
Lee
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Lacey, WA
Posts: 499
Hi,

State which model fridge you have, it will make it easyer for help,.... you are correct the fridge should run on just electricity. You should have buttons to select,.. like "auto" .

Most RV heaters need electricity and gas to operate. the gas provides the heat and the electricity provides the power for the fan and control.

As for te water temp issue in the shower... some owners upgrade the faucet.

Lee
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Old 12-05-2018, 08:09 AM   #3
sourdough
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Location: W. Texas
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You need to determine a couple of things first; 1) do you have it plugged into a proper AC outlet and are you getting power to your trailer and 2) are your propane tanks full or at least not empty (sounds like that part is OK). To check you AC turn on the airconditioner or microwave; do they work? If so, you should have AC to the trailer. If not, you have a loss of power somewhere.

On the hot water heater you should have 2 switches; on for electric and one for propane. Turn whichever one on you want to use or both. Mine light up when turned on. What kind of water heater do you have? If it is a Suburban there is also a switch on the water heater that has to be on. If it is a 13 model you could have a bad electric heating element in the water heater if the electric doesn't work.

You have 2 sources of power to the trailer; 12vdc and 120vac. They each power certain things. There are a myriad number of threads and posts pertaining to that and it would be a good read to research them on the forum.

From your brief description it sounds like your LP (propane) and 12vdc "stuff" is operating correctly but you aren't getting any 120vac. Again, are you plugged into an electrical receptacle?
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Old 12-05-2018, 12:05 PM   #4
FlyingAroundRV
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Depending on how confident you are with tools and messing around with electric stuff, you might check the following, based on my own experience with my fridge.
Troubleshooting the fridge not working on electric
1) check that you have ac power to the plug that the fridge plugs into. It is behind the grille outside, behind where the fridge sits. This can be tested with a plug tester (available from hardware stores) a volt meter, or best yet, something that draws a reasonable amount of power like a hair dryer.
2) If there is ac power to the fridge, have a look at the fuses on the fridge controller board. This board lives under the black cover at the back of the fridge. The cover is a bit fiddly to get off, one screw and then put the screwdriver into the little slots on the sides of the box and gently lever sideways to release the catch. On the board, you'll find one or two fuses. These are best checked with an ohm meter. It is hard to reliably check them visually.
3) Now you do need a volt/ohm meter for this step. The controller board has two sources of electricity, dc and ac. The ac comes from the plug and we don't want to poke around with 120v there (this goes for the previous step too), so unplug it. Now look for where the 12v dc comes in (wired to a couple of terminals on a terminal strip, then goes to the board. The + side goes to a thermal cutout switch first, then comes back to the board. Check if there is 12v at the board first. If not, then check at the terminal strip. If there is 12v there, but not at the board, the thermal cutout is defective, or a wire is broken. This is where you'll need the ohm meter. Disconnect the 12v power before doing ohms checks or you'll blow up your meter.
3) If you have 120v power to the fridge and 12v to the controller board, the next step is to check the ohms reading of the heater element. Disconnect the ac power by pulling the plug. On the controller board there are two black wires leading over to the heating element. They are connected to the board by plug on connectors. Disconnect them from the board and measure the resistance of the heating element. It should read around 40-odd ohms. If it reads open circuit, then the element is burnt out. You can replace this, but it's a fiddly job and one which will give you some scraped knuckles unless you pull the fridge out of its hole. This is probably best left for a tech.
4) If all of the above is OK, you might have a blown controller board. These are available from camping world, but are expensive.
5) There is also another possibility, which is what happened to me.
In my trailer, the power to the fridge plug comes from a connection in the distribution box. This connection is made with a wire nut and joins the solid wire for the fridge plug, with a stranded wire that branches off the converter connection at the circuit hreaker. In my case, this connection was very poorly done and it caused my fridge to not work on ac, but to cycle on and off electric repeatedly until it blew the fridge heater element. I replaced a controller board (not the problem) and the heater element and still had the cycling problem until I found this flaky connection.
To find this connection, you have to pull the fascia off the distribution box. Make sure you disconnect the ac from the pedestal before you get into this area as there are exposed live connections there.
HTH
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