Dear Dave,
I have a 2006 Fleetwood Flair 32′ RV. My issue is that when I run the RV heat, I get some heat into the bedroom but not nearly as much as the living room area. Is there a way to improve the heating airflow into the bedroom? —Alan
Dear Alan,
From the photos and videos I can find online, it looks like your furnace is located either under the refrigerator or directly next to it. The exhaust vent is to the left of the entrance door on the passenger side, and there is a vent on the side of the refrigerator cabinet.
According to the specs, it’s a 34,000 BTU unit, and Fleetwood mostly used Hydroflame units. They also had corrugated hoses rather than a plenum, which looks like the photo below.
The furnace has a blower wheel that pushes the air over the heat chamber and out a direct opening in the furnace like the one on the right in the picture.
You can see the round “punch out” on the top of the unit. There is typically one on each side to provide flexibility of hoses to attach according to the floor plan. Since the vent in the refrigerator cabinet is relatively close to where the unit is and you have very little heat coming out of it, I would suspect either the hose has gotten disconnected, pinched, or obstructed at the punch out. There also might be a diverter at the exit of the furnace that has collapsed.
Finding the RV heat panel
It looks like there is an access panel directly under the refrigerator, so I would start there by removing that and looking at the connection. You might be able to remove the vent on the side of the cabinet as well. There does not seem to be any other vents coming out of the kitchen cabinetry, so that is probably the only heat vent you have for the kitchen/living area. It looks like there is a wardrobe and three drawers underneath next to the refrigerator cabinet. You might be able to take the drawers out and see the hose that runs to the bedroom. If you can get access, you might try adding another hose to the furnace and put a vent in place of the lowest drawer or even try a “Y” in the hose to get a second vent in that area.
Sometimes they run a hose off the furnace down into the basement and come up in another area. However, it looks like your rig has the famous “Paco Beam,” and you probably can’t get to anywhere that would get air to the living area. Here is an example of another model.
Dave Solberg is a leading expert in the RV industry and author of the “RV Handbook” as well as the Managing Editor of the RV Repair Club.
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