RV Furnace Exhaust Smell. We Investigated What Could Go Wrong

Every RV has a furnace – a kind of device that will heat up the air in the coach to make you feel comfortable during colder nights. This is the thing that many people experience problems with, so today we decided to write a detailed article about the RV furnace problems.

It’s so cool to get away from your home-work routine for a couple of weeks or at least days and get your camper or RV out to spend some time in nature! But we can only imagine your stress when you turn on that furnace and find out it smells like exhaust. Different thoughts come to your mind: will I be cold this night, should I call for help, should I leave the camping site? Here, we are going to explain to you how things work when your furnace smells and give you some tips on what to do.

We’ll focus on these things:

1. Propane furnace exhaust smell inside your RV.
2. The furnace smells awfully outside your RV.
3. What can you quickly do to avoid breathing stinky air?
4. How to repair your furnace?

Let’s get started!

Furnace gives bad smell inside the RV

Be very careful! If anything smells bad in your RV, never fall asleep or just even sit on your couch with all windows closed! This is a life-threatening situation and you have to do something to ensure your life is safe.

If anything smells like exhaust in your RV, it may be dangerous to be there. The first thing you should do is to ask every single person to leave the RV and go to a certain safe distance from it. Then, you have to open all windows to let fresh air in. If it’s about CO2 leaks, you may just poison yourself to death. People will feel sleepy, fall asleep to never wake up again, so beware of any leaks and suspicious smells! It will save your life!

Now, when you are safe from being poisoned and sure that your family and friends are safe, too, you may start finding out what the problem is. We’ll let you know soon what you should do and how you may check everything.

The bad smell outside your RV

This situation is much less dangerous, but it may affect other people that parked their RVs just next to your vehicle. You should make sure that your furnace works properly. It may have problems with the ignition, burning process or it may just be dirty and clogged. What you need to do in this case is to turn off the furnace and find other ways to warm yourself that night. It’s dangerous to keep the furnace on if it smells like exhaust for a long time.

Also, pay attention to any puffs of smoke it may produce. If you see black or grey smoke, it adds to the guess that your furnace is out of order. Sleeping in your RV with a broken furnace that is still on is dangerous. You should turn it off immediately after you notice the problem.

What can go wrong with your furnace?

First of all, you need to understand what the furnace actually is. As the all-mighty Wikipedia says, this is a heat exchanger where the heat is produced with the help of combustion. In RVs, we mostly use propane furnaces. They are easy to use, simple to maintain, and quite efficient. So they burn propane which you may store in a certain tank and produce some heat to comfort you during cold nights.

Now, when propane burns, it smells like burning gas, the smell is light yet you can easily smell it if something goes wrong. Originally, exhaust gasses mustn’t enter your RV. If they do, some problem occurred with the furnace. But in most cases, it’s not about gasses that come into your RV.

In 90% of cases, it will be just dust. After you haven’t been using your furnace for a season, a lot of dust is gathered on a heat exchanger. Once you turned the device on, the dust started burning causing the weird smell like something is burnt. What you need to do in this situation is to turn the furnace to its maximum heating capability and open windows in your RV to let some fresh air come in. This will help you prepare all the equipment for optimal heating.

Please make sure everything is OK with the furnace and you don’t have any leaks of propane or any malfunctions in the furnace itself. After that only you can turn it on its highest heating level.

What to do to avoid dust burning?

There is nothing much you can do if you are at the camping site already. Just heat up the furnace to let the dust burn quickly. Of course, it would be better if you chill out for a minute or two outside at this time. But experienced campers know that they should provide some maintenance for their furnaces before the cold season.

Cleaning is the most important part of maintenance. The problem is that we don’t use the equipment for 6 or 8 months. And the dust builds up there on the heat exchanger. You need to take the furnace apart and clean it before using one. We highly recommend doing it with the help of a professional service station. A DIY job will do only if you have some experience. Inexperienced maintenance work with your furnace may be dangerous for you!

There aren’t many ways to clean the heat exchanger while the furnace is still in its place. You will need to take it out and spend some time getting to the exchanger itself. Then use any radiator cleaning solutions you may buy in any car parts store. Then reassemble and reinstall the furnace and don’t forget to check whether it works correctly.

What if it’s not dust?

Here we come to the point when your furnace burns but it’s not about dust. You may understand if your heating equipment has already been working for an hour or two, but the smell is still there. Turn off the furnace immediately and consult the specialists. It isn’t much you can do by yourself.

The possible reasons for burning smell are as follows:

1. Heat exchanger leaks. The heat exchanger consists of two independent contours which shouldn’t leak into each other. If they do, you may smell some bad odors when the furnace works.
2. The clogged furnace will smell even worse after it has been working for an hour or two. Clogged heat exchanger parts mean that one of them heats up to critical temperature and fails to work properly.
3. A propane leak is possible. If propane leaks into your RV, you will feel an unpleasant gas smell. It’s extremely important to stop the leak as fast as possible. Otherwise, your RV may start burning.
4. Exhaust gasses may come into the RV through some openings. For example, older RVs may have corrosion that destroyed metal panels of the body. If those corrosion holes are located near the furnace, you will get some gasses when your heating equipment works.

In any of these cases, you are going to need some professional help. Unfortunately, using your furnace won’t be possible. You will need to turn it off, to ensure that the propane tank is closed and doesn’t leak propane into the atmosphere or into your RV.

What if my furnace is broken?

If your heating equipment in the RV is broken, you better sort it all out before starting your next journey. Especially if it’s winter or if you are going to visit some cold places. The furnace should work well in order to provide you with some heating when you park your RV.

Well, there’s not much you can do to repair your furnace or even to replace it. You will need to know how to deal with propane equipment, electrical wiring, etc. So we recommend you go to a specialized service station. But if you have already repaired your furnace, this will take you a couple of hours to deal with the problem. In the worst-case scenario, you will replace the furnace with a new one.

Final words

Many people in the US and in the whole world adore RVs for the freedom and comfort they add to their lives. If the furnace works well, you can start your journey any season and be sure that you will be warm even on the coldest nights. Just make sure that you have enough propane on board.

But if you feel some weird smell like something burns when you turn on your furnace, just make sure that it’s safe for you and your family. The best option is to switch it off and then find the reason why it smells. In most cases, it will be just burning dust. But sometimes more dangerous problems may occur. You better have your furnace maintained by specialists every year to avoid such issues.