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Old 10-13-2019, 08:52 AM   #1
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Electric Heat

I have a 07 Meridian SE 36G. On the thermostat it has a position for gas heat then one for electric heat.

When I put the selection on electric heat the fan will operate and air will come out of the ceiling vents. However very little if any heat, does the unit work on the heat pump principal or are there electric heat elements that get hot?

The other strange (to me) is that with the electric heat selected the propane furnace will also come on. Why does this happen, or does it mean I really do not have any type of electric heat.
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Old 10-13-2019, 11:09 AM   #2
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On mine, if the delta between current room temp and thermostat setting is 5 degrees or more then the gas heat will automatically come on until the room warms up, after that it will be just electric heat.

We'd have to know exactly which unit you've got, but the odds are very high that it's a heat pump. So if it's very cool/cold outside then it's going to struggle to make warm air.
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Old 10-13-2019, 01:55 PM   #3
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Also the outside temp can be a reason for this. The heat pump doesn’t work under ~40 degrees. So the gas heater will step in when the outside temp is around 37 degrees.
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Old 10-14-2019, 04:04 AM   #4
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Thank you, after posting I went and got out the manuals. They went into a lot of detail about the electric and propane heat work together.
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:43 PM   #5
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Looks like you reached a solution to your immediate question.

I might add a couple of other wrinkles you may encounter traveling around. We have several sites we like to visit in the fall for leaf peeping that are 8 - 9K feet in altitude. Night temps dip into the low twenties.

As Creativepart alludes, and our manuals confirm, the efficiency curve for our heat pump turns south at about 45 degrees and zeros around 36 degrees.

Unfortunately, the efficiency curve for our propane appliances, furnace and refer, turns south at about 6K feet altitude. In fact, my Norcold manual advises not using the the propane mode above 5500 feet. Even our Mr. Heater advises flying closer to the deck.

What to do? Well, not being pet types, blankets and cuddling get us through to the morning cappucino.

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Old 10-20-2019, 04:23 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by be happy View Post
I have a 07 Meridian SE 36G. On the thermostat it has a position for gas heat then one for electric heat.

When I put the selection on electric heat the fan will operate and air will come out of the ceiling vents. However very little if any heat, does the unit work on the heat pump principal or are there electric heat elements that get hot?

The other strange (to me) is that with the electric heat selected the propane furnace will also come on. Why does this happen, or does it mean I really do not have any type of electric heat.

The electric heat is limited to about 5000 watts. It helps a bit--but 5000 watts simply isn't much.
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Old 10-20-2019, 05:36 PM   #7
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Camping at altitude

Quote:
“Unfortunately, the efficiency curve for our propane appliances, furnace and refer, turns south at about 6K feet altitude. In fact, my Norcold manual advises not using the the propane mode above 5500 feet. Even our Mr. Heater advises flying closer to the deck”
In response to part of a post quoted above, I guess I’m lucky that I have new appliances that don’t seem to be affected to any serious degree by higher elevations, ie. Above 5000’. We have dry camped at several locations in CO For the last 2 years at nearly 10,000’ using Dometic fridge, Atwood furnace, and Atwood water heater. All worked without any noticeable issue and continued working as we came down to the elevation in Houston at 142’. we dry camped using propane and also with electric hookups. I guess we are lucky we got the Micro Minnie 2106FBS with appliances that work. We have traveled over passes that topped close to 12,000’ and experienced no issues that we noticed. No modifications were done on any of the appliances. Maybe there is something I’m missing on these high altitude concerns that have been experienced or expressed. Would love to hear from others about this.
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Old 10-21-2019, 10:23 AM   #8
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We camp at 8700 ft and higher in Colorado in the Spring and Fall. It's not unusual for nights to be in the high 20's and days in the mid to high 30's. We can't use our heat pumps at those temps but we've never noticed any issues with our propane heating system. It keeps us toasty and warm.

As for the fridge we've never seen any issue either when we had a elec/lp RV fridge in the past either. We have a residential fridge now (YEAH!)

In fact, we lived for 5-years in Wyoming at a 7,000' elevation and never saw any problems with our propane house heater either.

Maybe it's not as efficient as at lower elevations, but it still works great at high elevations.
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