Fish House heater problem

We were having a good time at Mille Lacs in my friends new Ice Castle when the heater quit about midnight last night. It has a 20,000 btu forced air heater. It wouldn’t initiate a call for heat. When we turned it off and reset the thermostat the fan would run but it didn’t have any heat. We switched tanks, shut the valves off and on to see if it was a LP problem to no avail. The burners and oven work so we concluded that its not a LP problem. It does sound like it wants to light after a short while of the fan running but it doesn’t. Igniter bad? Thermostat bad? Thanks for any ideas you might be able to provide. BTW: a Buddy heater ran 8 hours with a window cracked slightly w/o waking up the CO detector. They must burn pretty clean. Kept us warm enough but we came back home with the wind and cold coming.

If its a new house, do you know if the propane tanks were purged when filled for the first time? That could be your issue. Based on the sounds you’re hearing with the heater, it is trying to ignite, it just not getting any propane in order to lite. I’d try some tanks you’ve used before and see how it works.

We had this same problem a couple weeks ago and tried everything. Turns out the intake vents on the outside of the house were clogged with snow not allowing air in

The tanks came with the fish house so don’t know if they were purged. Good suggestion. However, we could light all three burners so the lp is past the regulator?? The heater also did work all afternoon and evening and the temps were steady. I’m going to call Ice Castle,..I’ll post what we find out for the benefit of others.

Craig Sery wrote:

We had this same problem a couple weeks ago and tried everything. Turns out the intake vents on the outside of the house were clogged with snow not allowing air in

I would agree, the air intake is sucked something in. You may think it isn’t much, but it doesn’t take much. I have this happen to my house furnace one in awhile. An easy check is, if you can unhook the air intake pipe from the furnace, it will then run, if that is the problem. Don’t run your furnace for an extended period with it unhooked. I usually use a vacuum on the outside to clear the debris (usually some snow).

What these guys are talking about with the air intake being plugged may be the ticket.

If you start to poke around you will find lots of wires in the furnace, very surprising all the things that can go wrong there.

Anyway there is an air vain switch (sail switch) that needs to be tripped in order for the furnace to ignite. When the fan starts prior to ignition, the flow of air into the unit is checked buy moving a thin plastic or metal arm if there is air coming in, that arm is hooked to a pressure switch that will then close the circuit and allow the furnace to ignite.

Here are two videos on how it works and such. Hope it helps some.

A buddy of mine had this happen and it was the sail switch. Furnace fix-it guy said it over heated from poor air intake.

Check your batteries, they may not have enough power and need to be charged. The fan will run but igniter won’t work without the proper amount of battery juice.

There is a Ice Castle Owners group on facebook with a ton of information as well.

Same thing happened to my brother and I the third weekend of deer season in his brand new Ice Castle. So we try everything and nothing works. He calls the guy he bought it from and he walks us through a few things. Third thing we try is take the High switch fuse (which he called it) out, looks like a button on the front of the heater. There are clips to take it off and replace it with a 20 amp fuse (that you should carry for back up or take out of your fuse panel). Try that fuse and it worked, then he tells my brother to take it outside and throw it at the neighbors fish house which ended up was me being we were hunting. Now sit down have a beer and retry that switch. BAM the switch worked and has been so far this winter. Hope this helps you guys in the future.

Thanks for all the input guys. Circuit panel was burned out. Ice Castle dealer put a brand new furnace in. Not sure why,…probably just defective.

Good to hear it got figured out!