Portable Propane Heater Problem

[fishnsled]

I was doing some work on a buddies trailer yesterday and brought along my heater for some warmth in he garage. Heater fired up as always and ran fine for 20 minutes or so when it had a small ball of fire shoot from the heater. Ran fine for another 10 minutes or so and it did it again. Turned it off at the tank and it kept burning for the longest time. Opened up the tank and for a bit and shut it off again at the tank and the flames went out. What would cause this fireball effect, it wasn't bad be still don't want that happening in the hut in a month or so. Why would the gas not shut off? New tank last year.

[irishfield]

Sounds like the day Lloyd and Terry filled tanks (proving you can overfill the 1lb'rs) and tried to burn my bathroom down with the portable shower unit. Liquid vs gas making it to the heater. Put it outside and spark it up again and see if after burning for a bit it settles down and works correctly.

[camillj]

Could very well be the tank valve... I had one of those 'swap-em' ones this summer that wouldn't shut off at the tank at all after a couple of uses (seemed to work fine on our 'fire-table' so we used it up (pretty quickly) and 'swapped' it out ... of course I let them know at the station that the tank was faulty so they could take it out of commission. But I dont think the thing was more than a couple years old.

[fishnsled]

Thanks for the input guys. I remember the kid saying as he was filling the tank that he had never done one of the 5 pounders before. I also remember him pumping extra into the tank after it tipped the scale. will trying burning some off and see if it settles down and go from there. Thanks again!

[icceman]

I have had this happen with a mr.heater buddy. Since you are using a 5lb tank you should be using an inline filter. Propane being a very dirty gas could be contaminated with compressor oil, or other trace oils. When this happened to me I actually took the unit apart into pieces and found that all the lines were full of a oily liquid. Drained all the lines and cleaned reassembled, problem was fixed. If you try to take apart always check for leaks with soap and water. Better safe than sorry. Good luck.

[Nipfisher]

I had to replace the thermocoupler on my portable heater about 5 years ago. The part was about $40 and took my 5 minutes to fix.

 

When the thermocoupler gets hot it stays in the open position,but is supposed to close when gas supply is shut off and it cools down.