Atwood water heater, gas burner sputtering.

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Atwood water heater GC6AA-10E, gas burner sputtering.

Pre-trip inspection includes test firing all propane appliances. When the water heater lit it ran but sputtered. You can hear the sputtering sound from inside.

First, burner tube inspection, clear. Then the U Tube, no debris found. The U Tube (Atwood name) is the U-shaped tube in the tank that the flame goes thru to heat the water.

Next remove the gas orifice and look for small debris, nothing found. Reassembled and test fired, still sputtering.

Then I removed the entire gas valve and went to the work bench. This time I saw a blockage in the orifice, hardened pipe thread compound. I removed the inlet flare fitting after marking its position. The pipe thread compound on the pipe threads had hardened and some debris was in the valve but the filter screen before the gas enters the valve body blocked it from going into the valve body.

The gas orifice threads into an Orifice Holder (Atwood name), it also had pipe thread compound like the inlet connection, it had hardened and some became debris in between the orifice holder and valve body. The gas flow pushed the debris into the orifice. I removed the orifice holder and the compound debris had found a home in the orifice disrupting the gas flow. Picking the old compound out of the valve body and orifice holder threads and cleaning the out debris, carefully applied new pipe thread compound and reassembled.

Soap bubbled the connections prior to testing. Test firing the burner it ran smoothly no more sputtering.

Job requires basic hand tools and testing the connection for leakage.

Gary