Date:         Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:44:51 -0700
Reply-To:     Alistair Bell <albell@SHAW.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Alistair Bell <albell@SHAW.CA>
Subject:      Re: Dometic failure on propane, one time
Comments: To: David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net>
In-Reply-To:  <502acfe0.6256b40a.1fd5.ffffc65a@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

yes, but the fridge has separate line right from close to external regulator. So perhaps stove line opening/purging would help fill reg, but how can it help the separate fridge line?

alistair


On 2012-08-14, at 3:17 PM, David Beierl wrote:

> At 04:08 PM 8/14/2012, Alistair Bell wrote:
>> just coincidence or does the stove being lit do anything :) I'm not convinced about the line purging theory :)
> 
> Two burners together pull gas through the line about 15 times faster than the fridge, so they'll rather quickly clear up any mixture problems in the common line and regulator.  When my house furnace or water heater have been shut down for a while (they use much smaller/lighter natural gas, but have pilot flames about three times the size of the Westy fridge full flame) it takes an irritatingly long time for a working mixture to get from the gas valve to the pilot sometimes.  Irritating because the buttons on those big Honeywell valves are hard to hold in, the thermocouples heat slowly and cool instantly so you have to hold them in a long time and if you miss you're back to square one (or so it seems) and on the newish water heater they've got some fancy (probably flame-propagation-resistant aka "explosion-proof") shielding that makes it darn hard to see the pilot flame at all.  The valve on the Dometic is a piece of cake by comparison.
> 
> If the piping's been open there's no question that purging the line takes longer than you'd expect even with the stove burners.  If not...I used to know chapter and verse on how my fridge behaved, instrumented it every way from Sunday, discovered that a bigger fan in the back can actually lead to less cooling sometimes, ran it on the bench for weeks, ran it with the burner can open and watched the flame, you name it.  But all that was a long time ago now and my brain feels like high-grade Swiss cheese sometimes and low-grade the rest of the time, so I'll stop now.
> 
> Yours,
> David