Possible faulty LP sensor / alarm

newbold1 · 05-01-2017, 10:55 PM

Last weekend camping trip our LP alarm kept setting off every 30 minutes to 2 hours. There were no propane odors near the floor or alarm. Everything we were running was running on electric. We had one tank open to feed the stove for when we cooked. But the alarm was going off through the night. I finally disconnected it since there were no signs of a real problem.

Our trailer is going into its 5th season and I thought maybe the alarm was getting worn out and malfunctioning. I installed an exact model replacement alarm and I haven't heard it go off since. However, I wired the old alarm to a 12 volt battery and brought it in my house to see if it would repeat the false alarms. After a full day it never alerted. So, now I'm a bit confused. The old alarm isn't false alarming. The new alarm in the RV tests correctly but it's not going off at all either.

So... I'm not sure what to make of it. The open tank still shows as nearly full so I really don't think I have a leak. It's been about 9 days. I figure the tank would have emptied out at this point if I really had a line leaking.

Any ideas? The night the old alarm was going nuts it rained the entire day, heavily at times. I wouldn't think rain would matter but figured I'd mention it since it was unusual.

sennister · 05-02-2017, 05:46 AM

Were you running the heater when it was raining out or was it warm?

I ask because that is a combo sensor. In addition to LP it is your CO detector. Maybe it was hitting on CO and not propane. That is what I don't like about these combo sensors. They go off but you don't know why. You can normally smell propane.

If not the heater another thing is propellant found in aerosol cans. Lets say you were cooped up in the camper because of rain and you started dusting with a spray can or an air fresher like Frebreze or maybe doing your hair with hair spray. When dealing with propane in the tanks for your stove, heater and such, they normally add ethyl mercaptan to the propane to give it the odor. If they didn't, propane would have no smell and you wouldn't know there is a leak. However in things that have really low volumes of propane where using the smell would defeat the purpose like air freshener and pretty much anything else in an aerosol can, they are not required to add this. So people don't realize it is building up in the camper when in use. The concentrations can get high enough to trip the detector with not a lot of use.

Ruth · 05-02-2017, 06:37 AM

The sensors are only good for about 5 years. We had to replace the sensor in our 2013 Puma last year. It started beeping in the middle of the night while parked in the driveway for the winter...really pissed off the neighbors as we could not hear it in our house. picked one up on Amazon for cheaper than the RV store and assembled in 2016. The other possibility is dust, dirt, cobwebs etc. Try vacuuming it or a low volume blast of air....

newbold1 · 05-02-2017, 07:06 AM

Water heater was on electric. No propane items were in use at all. The LP alert light was lit and not the CO light. So I know it was triggering off the propane sensor. The old alarm was pretty clean upon examining it. The only other thing I can think of is that we often use an Air Wick plug in freshener. Maybe that could have caused something? Odd though because we've had that air freshener in the RV for years without any problem. I think it must have been the old alarm wearing out or some fluke that happened that one rainy night. The new alarm hasn't gone off. It's just weird that the old one seems fine now too though. In any case, we survived the night, no headaches or symptoms of a problem in the RV, and it's not continuing. It did have me worried to sleep in there that night though.

sennister · 05-02-2017, 07:43 AM

I am trying to remember how the air wick freshener's work. Do they plug in and periodically spray up in the air or is it the plug in scented oil type? If the spray version it might be driven by propane. Though I don't think they go off often enough to set off the LP detector unless it is located pretty close to it. If it was raining the camper was probably pretty well sealed up. So maybe relocate the air freshener to a position further from the detector if the new one has issues. Or change to an oil based system as they shouldn't have any LP.

It is entirely possible that it was just starting to fail as you said. I mainly wanted to point out some other sources of LP that can be found in a camper as many times people will only think of the smelly kind that comes from the tanks on the front of a camper. There are other sources of LP that people use on a daily basis but don't think of because we don't normally have LP detectors in our regular homes. From air fresheners to bug spray and they won't have the traditional propane odor.

newbold1 · 05-02-2017, 11:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sennister

I am trying to remember how the air wick freshener's work. Do they plug in and periodically spray up in the air or is it the plug in scented oil type? If the spray version it might be driven by propane. Though I don't think they go off often enough to set off the LP detector unless it is located pretty close to it. If it was raining the camper was probably pretty well sealed up. So maybe relocate the air freshener to a position further from the detector if the new one has issues. Or change to an oil based system as they shouldn't have any LP.

It is entirely possible that it was just starting to fail as you said. I mainly wanted to point out some other sources of LP that can be found in a camper as many times people will only think of the smelly kind that comes from the tanks on the front of a camper. There are other sources of LP that people use on a daily basis but don't think of because we don't normally have LP detectors in our regular homes. From air fresheners to bug spray and they won't have the traditional propane odor.

It's the heated scented oil type freshener. We camp this upcoming weekend so we will be in the RV enough to find out if the new detector starts going off. If so, I'll suspect we have a problem. If not, I'll chalk it up to a fluke or old detector giving out.

newbold1 · 05-19-2017, 03:46 AM

Just a quick update... apparently as these detectors age they can give false alarms and then stop doing so for a long time for no particular apparent reason. I've had no alarm triggered since the initial problem and I've tried leaving both the old and new detector running for weeks. Strange. In any case, I tossed out the old detector at this point. It was supposed to be replaced at 7 years. Only made it 5 years. At least they're not terribly expensive to replace.

troutslayer · 05-20-2017, 09:20 AM

I have the same issue on one that I just installed one year ago. The problem is that there was no mfg. date anywhere on the item or package so I have no idea how old it is. It is brown in color (cuz I wanted it to match the woodwork...sort of) so it may have been on the shelf for quite some time. Guess I'll need to replace again.

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