Girard nightmare

[vwprostock]

S0 quick re-cap....new 2018 324BHTS in April. Dirty rotten pile of crap no good waste of space hot water heater has worked less and less properly since day one.

Used RV about 12 nights April-June and was able to shower twice, and wasted a poop ton of water trying to get the rotten waste of propane and water to work.

June- hook up RV to take to dealer. Put some water in the tank. Did not run anything, bleed anything. Pull onto Service Drive, switch pump on from outside, run outside kitchen, hot water heater works perfect!! Works perfect for the dealer. I drag it home, works perfect in driveway off and on.

August 25th (yesterday) towed 65 miles to our normal spot, pump off, filled tank here at campground, (no water at campsites) hot water heater works perfect all day yesterday, I take a nice shower, chalk it up that there must have been an air bubble somewhere that got out in transit. Yeah, hot water!

Wake up this morning...no hot water...won't kick on and the dreaded barking beeping annoying "E9" code beeping at me.

Jayco and Girard are about to learn what the terms "Substantially impairs the use or value" means here in the State of Texas! Jayco denied my request to assist me (not 100%) in putting an Atwood in in visit one, save us all the known headaches.

I could shower any time, any moment, in my worn ass out 2001 Qwest 29BH, and I should be able to do the same in a 2018 324BHTS.

[Fr8Train]

When you say it won’t fire, do you mean it won’t fire at all, or it fires but shuts off after a few seconds? You know it works, as it has worked. I would be looking for the intermittent failure.

Loose connection to the control board, loose connection at the “eye” or thermocouple. Faulty control board.

Can you verify that it works 100% on electric.

Can you verify that your shower(s) are shut off at the cables and not the switch on the shower head.

[vwprostock]

So I might have fixed this thing in a fit of rage-ish and barrage of reading this morning.

It has always flashed an E1 or E9 code, and this morning it was only E9. Flame sensor short.

When it does this, the control board lights up as soon as you turn any faucet on, and the flame symbol lights, then about 1-3 seconds later, it beeps a few times and flashes E9.

So I found the wiring diagram and the flame sensor is like any other thermocouple except the end that actual touches the flame is pretty small, almost just a bailing wire size probe. The ceramic (looking) white part is in a clamp with two other similar sized and looking ceramic cylinders. All three mount pointing up, and on mine, the flame sensor appeared to be barely touching a metal heat shield. In what a I know about thermocouples, this shouldn't matter, but for giggles I got a long straight screwdriver and slightly bent the flame sensor probe down (away from the sheet metal, closer to the burner) and as of this typing, it worked all day, and I even showered before heading home. (trailer is staying in camp as I will return to it Thurs night).

If this is the fix, I am somewhat amazed nobody at my local dealer thought to look at this...or has experienced it before, but I am also not really ready to call it fixed either.

My guess is bouncing down the highway one day its touching, and then it wasn't, and when I took my awesome shower last night, the entire unit warmed up and then it touched again.....thats my wild guess for now.

Greg

[blujay40]

Glad you figured out how to address this issue and got things working.

For future reference, give Girard a call directly for any issues with these units. I have found that not only are they great to work with, but eliminates the crap you went thru with your dealer and Jayco.

When we had ours (replaced with a Truma AquaGo Comfort last year) and had problems when we were 1500 miles from home, not only did they answer our call right away but went above and beyond in trying to help resolve our issues. And when the troubleshooting over the phone failed, they express shipped a new unit to our site and paid for a local RV tech to swap it out for us.

Their units may have at least a few shortcomings, but as for their support, I can't recommend them enough.

https://greenrvproducts.com/pages/how-can-we-help

[vwprostock]

So hopefully the final update.

In my fit of anger/rage early last Sunday morning, same time I posted here, I emailed Girard.

Nice guy called and emailed me back Monday and I spoke to him and he confirmed they have seen a few of these with the flame sensor touching the copper colored heat shield and my little bend-o-rama is what he would have suggested. Gives me a tad more confidence this might be resolved once and for all.

Little grumpy my dealer didn't at least inquire to Girard and ask if they had any known issues to check for...but oh well.

I am headed back to the RV for 4 nights of camping with four of us, so we will put it to the test!

Greg