Furnace occasionally trips off

[9to5dreamers]

Hello, we have a 2016 30' Flying Cloud (our first trailer) that we have parked in our back yard over the winter. It is winterized, but we have it plugged into the house and use it occasionally. We use the furnace, which usually works just fine, however, sometimes it shuts off seemingly for no reason and we have to go outside, take off the cover by the exhaust, and reset the furnace switch back on. Can anyone explain why the furnace might be shutting off like that? Is it something to do with the battery or the fact that we have the Airstream plugged into the normal 15 amp household circuit? Not using anything other than lights/furnace.

[Wayward]

Sounds like you are resetting the furnace circuit breaker. There is an outside chance it is a bad circuit breaker, but more likely something in the furnace is drawing too much current. Main current draw in furnace is the fan motor.

A possibility is low DC voltage - which is easy to check with a voltmeter so try that first. If you have one (or both) bad batteries, they could be drawing a lot of current from your converter, dropping the voltage in the trailer and causing excessive current draw at the furnace fan motor. If you do not have a voltmeter you could isolate the batteries by disconnecting (main cabin switch or remove battery ground cables)

If voltage is good, likely culprit would be the fan motor. To troubleshoot that you need to put an ammeter on the wire going to the motor.

[9to5dreamers]

Thank you, Wayward. We suspect the batteries are shot as we have gone too long a couple of times in checking the water and it was empty. I do not have a voltmeter yet, but will get one and check with that as well. Just learning about all of this as we have had the rig only a little over a year and this is the first winter we've had it at home. Appreciate your response.

[carl2591]

YEAH is you boiled all the water out of batteries they are toast.. replace and check more often.. monthly or so is good rule of thumb or go AGM and forgetaboutit.

Originally Posted by 9to5dreamers

Thank you, Wayward. We suspect the batteries are shot as we have gone too long a couple of times in checking the water and it was empty. I do not have a voltmeter yet, but will get one and check with that as well. Just learning about all of this as we have had the rig only a little over a year and this is the first winter we've had it at home. Appreciate your response.