propane water heater in a 5th wheel home.

Please help. I live in my rv, its my home. 6 months ago i replaced a defective water heater in my rv with a water heater given to me so I dont know the brand. It is a pilot lite type. I had to replace the orface and thermalcoupler assembly. Since that time it has been working fine. That is until 2 days ago.... i took a shower and the waterheater worked correctly. I made dinner n washed dishes n noticed i didn't hear the heater start up. Upon checking to see what was wrong i discovered the heater was burning incorrectly. It had a yellow flame that smoked black inky smoke. I checked my tanks and they seem to still have about 1/3 left in each of two 7 gallon tanks. The stove is still apears to be working correctly. I try to relite it several times and get the same resulting yellow flame and inky black smoke.
Any ideas on the problem? How do i fix?
Thanks for your time.

 

Welcome to the forums.

It sounds like something is blocking off the air supply. It would appear that it would have something to do with your repair. Why did you change the orifice and thermocouple ?

A make and model number would be really helpful to me. Could be an Atwood or Suburban.

 

Sounds like it may have been natural gas and you tried to convert to propane????

You need to change the gas valve. You already changed the orfice, but is it the right one???

IMO your better off replacing these units with a small residential electric only....

 

thanks for your time people. turns out i had a spider web in the air inlet pipe. took the pipe loose and out came the spider. after killing the spider i used a flexible wire to clean the tube and poof i lite the pilot lite and works beter than it did before my issue.

 

Shouldn't this thread now be moved to the "Indoor and Outdoor Pest Control" forum?

 

It worries me that no mention of the gas valve being changed. The W.C." on both are different. NG is around 3.5" and LP is around 10" W.C.

 

... Maybe the water heater was already set up for Propane.

 

Then why would the orfice need to be changed??