Wacky Water Heater
The last trip had us smelling what we thought was gas from the water heater area. As you may know from reading the Plumbing Problems page. Just to head off any future problems I decided to replace the original Bowen water heater with a new Atwood pilot model.
Original Bowen
Removal was pretty straight forward. Just removed the gas line, water connections and mounting screws.
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| Inside view with the new CPVC plumbing. Shown is the old heater. | One view of the opening. After the screws were removed it took a large putty knife to loosen up the old Vulkem to get the old heater out | Another view of the opening showing the piping and the black tank on the lower right. |
OLD VS. NEW
Well, I have to tell ya. I was very disappointed in the new construction compared to the original. The original had a metal enclosure.
That is Styrofoam on the new one, that's not packing material. The Styrofoam IS the insulation! The metal is cheap too, very flimsy.
The next problem was the old heater wanted the gas line through the bottom of the trailer and the new one wanted it from the back. So I had to drill a hole in the new heater to match it up.
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| New heater installed. Don't make the mistake I made. I put the Vulkem on the trailer opening instead of the heater flange. That left some openings in the flange. I went back and added some more Vulkem as best as I could but it could have been avoided. | Yes, I know. Flex lines. I tried and tried to run the hard pipe directly into the tank. I had problems getting the elbows from the tank inlets to line up with the existing piping and not leak. Ultimately had to switch to straight nipples and use the flex lines. Not as clean as I would have liked but, hey, no leaks! | I was able to use the original stainless steel water heater cover as opposed to the new white one that came with the heater. I did have to modify the vent by bolting the new vent cover on the old heater panel. It is a press in on the new cover and not very secure, so I bolted it on. |
Out of all the projects so far this water heater replacement was the most difficult. Not shown is the problems I had with the gas line. I broke the original line by trying to bend the copper line by hand to fit the new angle of the new heater. You CANNOT BEND A COPPER GAS LINE BY HAND. I was back and forth to the hardware store a million times. I ended up buying about 10 feet of copper line, and borrowing a pipe cutter, bender, and flair tool. Several hours of fiddling around I got a leak free connection.
Second problem was getting the heater in the opening. I ended up ripping the Styrofoam a little which bother me. It's ok and probably not as bad as I think. But it just seems wrong to have Styrofoam as the cover to your product.
Third major hurdle which I touched on earlier was water leaks. Try as I might I could not stop them until I went with the flex lines and straight nipples. The Atwood heater uses an aluminum tank which is a little scary itself as you snug a brass nipple into it. Aluminum is very easy to damage the threads. Atwood recommends a plastic nipple but I felt the brass would hold up better.
All in all it was worth it. Although the original reason for replacing it, a gas smell was sort of a wild goose chase. I have read since then that some camp grounds have hard water with higher sulfur in it which causes the smell we experienced. I am pretty sure that is what we were smelling and not a gas leak at all.
The new heater is nice though, seems to heat up faster than the old one. It did blow out 3 times on our first trip. Atwood has an aftermarket relight kit I may look in to.
