An odd fault with Whale water heater resolved

[rwg]

Thought that this one would be worth mentioning on here, just in case anyone else is hit by the same problem - it took some pretty good detective work by the service department of Marquis Newbury to work it out in the end...

We have Whale air heating and water heating in our van (2021 Benivan - basically an Auto Trail PVC with Benimar stickers). It has two circular control panels, one for the water and one for the air heating, like this

In early 2022 we started having trouble with the water heating - the control panel would do odd things, sometimes come up with actual fault codes and other times just not do what it was supposed to with no fault codes. Turning it off and on again a few times would usually fix the issue, but it slowly got worse to the point that it was almost impossible to get it to work.

It seemed like a control panel fault, so that was the first thing to get replaced back in June. The van was then out of use for about 6 weeks with the Fiat DPF problem, so at first we didn't realize that the issue wasn't properly fixed by the panel change - in fact there now seemed to be no way to get the hot water to turn on.

Whale phone support were helpful at this point when I called them and suggested that I should ask my dealer to replace 2 circuit boards in the water heater itself - unfortunately Whale warranty department were less helpful and would only send out one board at a time (and not very fast at that), so it rather dragged on waiting for parts to arrive, having them fitted and finding that they failed to fix the problem.

This week, the last of the suggested parts arrived and still failed to fix the problem (the parts were the main PCB and the 'LIN' PCB on the water heater - the latter handles communication with the control panel). Marquis were very good at this point and started taking parts from another van in stock to test in our van - they ended up with basically a whole new heater unit of the other van plugged into ours and still not working. This is where we left things yesterday, and I was quite worried that there didn't seem to be a solution in sight.

Fortunately a night's sleep clearly gave them some new ideas to try out, and I got a call this morning to tell me that they'd fixed it. The cause...?

It turns out that the controller for the warm air heating provides power and data to the water heating controller (the two are linked by a short 3 way cable). Since this was connected to the system, they decided to try a new warm air controller and suddenly everything started working. Oddly the original warm air controller worked absolutely fine, but in some way it was upsetting the water controller - maybe not providing the right power supply? maybe sending bad data?

Hats off to Matt and the team at Marquis Newbury for managing to work this one out!

cheers,


Robin

 

[Stonemags76]

Jane And Rog - any use to you?

 

[Jane And Rog]

Thanks very much for that, will forward to the chief engineer.

 

[Jane And Rog]

Thanks very much for that, will forward to the chief engineer.

Chief engineer here. Sadly we have whale water heater, Webasto air heater and Truma air con. Adria birthed a mongrel. No chance of them talking to each other let alone confusing them confusing each other :-(

 

[rwg]

Another thing I was told during the various replacements/testing/investigations was that there have been some cases where Whale heating systems have had problems related to solar panel controllers on the same electrical system. I think it was to do with voltages as the dealer kept being asked by Whale to test the voltages on the 12V system.

If it's easy to do, you might want to try disconnecting the solar system somehow just in case that makes your Whale water heater spring back into life. A bit of a long shot perhaps, but you never know...

cheers,

Robin

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[Jane And Rog]

Thanks for that, not sure how easy it is but will take a look.

 

[Scott99]

Thought that this one would be worth mentioning on here, just in case anyone else is hit by the same problem - it took some pretty good detective work by the service department of Marquis Newbury to work it out in the end...

We have Whale air heating and water heating in our van (2021 Benivan - basically an Auto Trail PVC with Benimar stickers). It has two circular control panels, one for the water and one for the air heating, like this

View attachment 705301
In early 2022 we started having trouble with the water heating - the control panel would do odd things, sometimes come up with actual fault codes and other times just not do what it was supposed to with no fault codes. Turning it off and on again a few times would usually fix the issue, but it slowly got worse to the point that it was almost impossible to get it to work.

It seemed like a control panel fault, so that was the first thing to get replaced back in June. The van was then out of use for about 6 weeks with the Fiat DPF problem, so at first we didn't realize that the issue wasn't properly fixed by the panel change - in fact there now seemed to be no way to get the hot water to turn on.

Whale phone support were helpful at this point when I called them and suggested that I should ask my dealer to replace 2 circuit boards in the water heater itself - unfortunately Whale warranty department were less helpful and would only send out one board at a time (and not very fast at that), so it rather dragged on waiting for parts to arrive, having them fitted and finding that they failed to fix the problem.

This week, the last of the suggested parts arrived and still failed to fix the problem (the parts were the main PCB and the 'LIN' PCB on the water heater - the latter handles communication with the control panel). Marquis were very good at this point and started taking parts from another van in stock to test in our van - they ended up with basically a whole new heater unit of the other van plugged into ours and still not working. This is where we left things yesterday, and I was quite worried that there didn't seem to be a solution in sight.

Fortunately a night's sleep clearly gave them some new ideas to try out, and I got a call this morning to tell me that they'd fixed it. The cause...?

It turns out that the controller for the warm air heating provides power and data to the water heating controller (the two are linked by a short 3 way cable). Since this was connected to the system, they decided to try a new warm air controller and suddenly everything started working. Oddly the original warm air controller worked absolutely fine, but in some way it was upsetting the water controller - maybe not providing the right power supply? maybe sending bad data?

Hats off to Matt and the team at Marquis Newbury for managing to work this one out!

cheers,


Robin

Hi Robin

Did your heating have any problems?

We have same issue. The van is Autotrail we got new in 2021. The valve kept opening at random times emptying all the water. The valve was replaced.

Since then for the past 17 months the van has been back 10 times for warranty work for the same issue. The water side would randomly fault in the off position. Sometimes it would take anything form 1 to 20 attempts to reset it. It could fault anything between 5 minutes to a day.

When in use on gas or electric it would never fault, on in the standby position.

The boiler has been had; two PCB boards, gas regulator, burner hot water control panel ( not heater) and who knows what else. Over £600 of warranty claims have been paid out. Whale just seem to go round in circles...I think hoping it go away.

Hopefully ours has the same problem. As you can imagine it's not been the best of experiences for a new van.

Best regards Graham

 

[rwg]

Hi Graham,

the air heating system has always pretty much behaved itself - it usually takes a couple of tries to light on gas, but other than that seems to work fine. To be honest I don't think it has ever gone into fault mode and needed a reset. For us, the problem was always with the water heater misbehaving.

When you lost the water, was it the valve operated by the yellow lever in the floor under the sink that opened by itself? I've heard of them dribbling if they get a bit of something (grit, etc) in the valve and can't quite shut properly, but not opening by itself. The equivalent Truma water heater does have a frost protection valve that can open by itself, but I thought the Whale was manual.

Ours did start out being temperamental before it stopped working entirely - in a way stopping working entirely probably helps get it fixed, because there is no uncertainty when changing something about whether it has helped or not.

Hope that you get it resolved soon!

Robin

 

[Scott99]

Hi Graham,

the air heating system has always pretty much behaved itself - it usually takes a couple of tries to light on gas, but other than that seems to work fine. To be honest I don't think it has ever gone into fault mode and needed a reset. For us, the problem was always with the water heater misbehaving.

When you lost the water, was it the valve operated by the yellow lever in the floor under the sink that opened by itself? I've heard of them dribbling if they get a bit of something (grit, etc) in the valve and can't quite shut properly, but not opening by itself. The equivalent Truma water heater does have a frost protection valve that can open by itself, but I thought the Whale was manual.

Ours did start out being temperamental before it stopped working entirely - in a way stopping working entirely probably helps get it fixed, because there is no uncertainty when changing something about whether it has helped or not.

Hope that you get it resolved soon!

Robin

Thanks for replying Robin.

The heater has been faultless. The water heater would sometimes fire on the first go, sometimes it would go through 3 cycles then fault. You're right, an all out fault would be better. Hopefully it's the heater controller. I've sent the details to the garage.

The valve would fully open if the pump was switched on at the controller. For no apparent reason it would fully open and empty both tanks! It happened when we were on a evening walk wild camping in the northwest of Scotland 20 miles from a fill up. Came back to the hot and cold water tanks empty. There was no consistency. After the valve was replaced the hat water system started faulting. Like I said 17 months and 10 trips to the garage.

Fingers crossed this time