Propex Heater revisited

As our friend Debs enjoyed the last post about the Propex heater so much, this follow up is especially for her.

I sent our faulty heater back to Propex to be inspected and repaired as it made sense to have it checked for the first time in its 21 year faultless life. They received it on Friday afternoon. On the Monday afternoon I received a call to say that the heater was repaired and being returned. If the weekend wasn’t in the way this would have been a next day turn around. The heater is a simple design and utterly reliable. There aren’t many manufacturing companies that are prepared to work on equipment of this age.

The faulty Ignition system was replaced. The Spark assembly was replaced at the same time due to its age.

Although given the time and access to the appropriate parts I could have carried out the repairs myself. Knowing that the unit has been bench tested and returned to the manufacturer’s specification was worth a lot, as obviously the combustion area of the casing needs to be sealed correctly to stop any carbon monoxide leakage.

Refitting the heater back into Puffin was a pain (quite literally) having to work in a compact cupboard.

It’s always one step forward and two back with most jobs.

The flexible flue tubing that supplies fresh air to the burner disintegrated when I was refitting it. It is a twin wall construction that is spiral wound. Pushing the tube back on to the spigot seems to separate the inner spiral. Luckily the exhaust tubing was fine.

I ordered a metre of Stainless steel tubing from Propex and with a bank holiday in the way meant it probably wouldn’t arrive until Tuesday.

 

If you own a VW T4 Trident Autosleeper and you want to remove the Propex heater you need to unscrew the rear support wooden batten. The heater will never come out or go back in with it in place. ( a lesson learnt the hard way).

 

Are still with us Deb? I’ll be asking questions later.

However I was able to try out the heater in its temporally fixed position.

I hate that moment when you press that switch for the first time and hope it fires up.

Well it didn’t. Try again, nothing. Third time lucky and it burst into life. The gas just needed time to reach the burner. Turned it on and off several times and it fired each time.

The flexible tubing arrived Tuesday and I was straight out to fit it. I ordered it with an end cap which keeps the tubing spirals together. The replacement tubing was a far superior quality to the original and fitted with out any swearing.

With the heater now in place I tested again and it fired up. In fact seems to give out more heat than before.

Job done

Kettle on and then I sat in a lovely cosy Campervan drinking tea and nibbling biscuits

Having a paranoid nature means I shall be firing it up over the next few days just to check.

You still awake Deb ??