Hi all,
My propane water heater is not working - just quit lighting on my recent trip. While waiting for a repair appointment, I got out the Honda generator. I knew it would probably not run the A/C (it didn't) but I was surprised that the electric water heater did not heat. It does work on shore power. Just curious if others have used a generator to heat your water.
I have a 2017 17B with the dual water heater.
Might be another case where the converter is sucking up some of the power. If I'm reading the online specs right, the water heater uses 1440 watts, the generator puts out 1600 watts. Any other load, such as charging batteries would cut down on what the WH gets. May be that the WH was working, but at a lower level then you see when hooked to city power.
Are you positive you had the outside power switch and circuit breaker on? There is no reason it shouldn’t heat on the generator. I ran a 1500W pizza oven for a fellow camper once.
Do you have the Progressive Industries EMS (voltage protection) installed? You need to disable it when you run on generator power (it finds an open ground or something like that). Also, the water heater is just an heating element with no motor so it will heat on any low or high voltage power as long as the generator or trailer breakers don't trip. It doesn't really care how about the quality of the power.
Mystery solved! I did a little research and visited youtube for fixes. Made a bonding plug and now all works fine... even the A/C! Turns out the EMS is the issue. Thanks all for your responses.
I had the same problem on my 20 1717 B. Soon after getting it the propane water heater just stopped working. Good light. I went through all the troubleshooting routine – no soap. Talked with Reace and he said it’s a common problem with that model year what are heater circuit board malfunction. He sent me a new one with directions, I switched it out, and it's worked fine since. Good luck!