Just been away in caravan(1998 Compass), and heater is not working. The fuse light comes on and at first the control panel also lit up, without actually working. Now the control panel does not light up.The gas heater was not working when we bought the caravan earlier this year, but this didn't worry us as we always use electric hook ups. Also, i tried the reset flap this had no effect.
Not sure but the control switch not lighting is a bad sign! generally this always shows a light whether the fanmaster works or not.
First thing to check then is if 12v is getting too the switch.
Next, has the fan been noisy of late? this is a sure sign of a worn fan motor and that soon leads to the main control board, and occasionally the wall switch, being overloaded and burning out.
I suppose the good news is I can fix it whatever is the matter!
The fan sounded okay last time it was working. This was in early July, our next trip out was to France,when we hooked the electricity up there was no power at all. Checked the site hook up point and it had tripped out, this happened quite often until they sent someone to sort it out.When we first got the power back on we tried the hot water(not straight away), and it wasn't working, then checked the fan heater, lights on but again not working, after a few few days the control panel stopped lighting up.
After reading the manual i found the trip switch for the hot water and it was ok.We left the heater thinking it may have been something to do with the power supply on site, so we tried it again last week over here,still no good.
Just been over to caravan with multimeter. I set the meter to 20v dc and a reading of 0.11 appeared on the screen. When i attached the leads to the wires it dropped to 0.02, does this sound right?
No it's not right, the '11' should be the other side of the decimal point, so it looks like you have no 12v power getting too the switch.
You set the meter correctly but if your not sure of the meter, check the reading at the battery, the switch should then give almost exactly the same reading
After that, next thing to do is find out why and best place to start is any control panel you have and fuses there that may have blown.
Been over to caravan again, checked battery - ok. Had a look at fuses again, looked ok, but thought i may as well check them for continuity. The 5 amp fuse showed no reading so i put a new one in and it got it working - phew!
Could this have blown when we first hooked up in France with the water heater needing a reset at the same time?
Anyway, thanks for the advice Gary, at least i know how to use a multimeter now!
Glad your sorted and learnt the usefulness of a cheap multimeter, would not travel without mine, I can tell you!
But, I don't see how the water heater fault on the 240v side had anything to do with Fanmaster 12v fuse blowing? Also never rely on visual checks of fuses, make sure with a meter or just a battery, bulb and a couple of bits of wire will do.
You have no idea how much money I make from simply changing a fuse because someone just looked!!