The Saga of the Furnace Ends

I think, I hope, that we’ve finally won the battle of the furnace. Our home has a 34K BTU Suburban. It’s quiet, seems to be economical on fuel and isn’t a budget buster on electricity drawing 7.5 amps @ 12 VDC. The downside of its simple safe design was Suburban’s one try to lite then quit, leaving the fans blowing cold air at a current draw of 7.5A out of the batteries until the batteries die or you intervene.

After cleaning everything, soldering some bad connections and replacing the gas solenoid the furnace still refused to operate reliably about 1/3 of the time. The next guess was that the relay on the logic board was failing but Suburban epoxy coats their boards and that makes component replacement difficult, after much research we ordered a Dinosaur Electronics Fan 50 Plus Pins instead of the available Suburban logic board. Why? Because the Dinosaur board offers a try three times as does the Suburban, but also fan control so the fan won’t deplete the batteries if we sleep through the night. When you’re tired enough sleep does happen.
In addition the Fan 50 will also wait one hour and try again before waiting for help, giving the batteries a chance to recover and maybe give you a little more heat before the batteries go completely flat.
So far all is well. We had a good nights sleep and as I sit here writing the furnace continues to cycle on and off keeping things at sweater temperature.

The antique Dayton generator is hammering away on its trailer hitch mounted platform charging the computers, cell phones and the house batteries. I also ordered, again after much research, from Best Converter an Intelli-Power 9260C combination power converter and three stage battery charger because it should do the job and I can afford it. It’s not my first choice since it only offers a constant voltage bulk charge, then absorption and if the batteries sit long enough float charge with occasional bulk rate charging to stir up the electrolyte. But then again it won’t fry the electrics either the way the faster constant current charge might as the voltage rises to maintain the charging current flow into the battery. I’ve been doing a manual constant voltage charge using a varactor on a manual 40A battery charger, and after frying some light bulbs with too high a charging voltage (but a really nice fast charging current !) and I hope that with a computer corrected input voltage and computer controlled output voltage I can still cut down my generator run time and treat the batteries a little more kindly. Right now when the furnace comes on the charging voltage drops and so does the charging rate until the furnace stops. FedEx is promising Monday delivery and I’ll have the Intelli-Power installed before I hit the sack but I’ll probably monitor a three-hour generator run to see how it does. Then sleep.
I ordered the Dinosaur Boards from RVPATC eBay sales and the service has been fantastic. The board was shipped right away and thanks to the Manchester postman the board returned just as efficiently. After an e-mail exchange RVPATC agreed to turn the board around and mail it back to me. That’s great service since I think I paid a fair price for the board and shipping was included in the purchase price. Not shipping twice. Now to write the Manchester postmaster and complain.