Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Figured It Out!

After considering a comment on my earlier post by my friend Rae, I think I now know what happened. When Norma and Nancy were cleaning the motorhome the other day they were using the 120 volt heater and vacuum cleaner on the same GFI breaker. The fridge was also running on that breaker. The fridge has been running on AC for most of the summer and when the breaker tripped, it tried to transfer to gas. Since it has not run on gas since April and it has been raining here for days (weeks), everything was too damp for the flame to light. That was when she noticed the check light was on. After drying out in the shop and resetting the GFI, it worked properly.

One of the things I would have done as part of my trouble shooting if I had the time, would have been to try to dry the outside compartment out with my heat gun. That probably would have fixed the gas problem and I eventually would have found the tripped breaker as well.

Thanks for steering me in the right direction Rae!

3 comments:

  1. That sounds very logical! Glad to return a minute amount of the help you have given me over the years. :)

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  2. GFI devices trip due to a ground fault, not an overload. Your regular breaker in the main panel would trip in that event. My experience is that GFI devices in trailers often trip for no obvious reason, and thus should be the primary suspect!

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  3. Just another comment about running on gas, we ran into some heavy rain and wind on our way south and when we stopped at a campground the fridge was flashing LP, it's normally an indication of no propane. I think what happened was that the wind or the rain caused a flame failure which shut down the fridge as a safety feature. It happened 2 days in a row but now the fridge is back to working normally, running off electricity probably dried it out. It's happened a couple of times before, no worries. I'm going to pull the shroud around the flame enclosure and check for debris (when we get to a warmer sunnier climate!) Al. (almcc)

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