Rixen heater operation
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System: this wakes up the whole heating/hot water "brain" and tells it to get ready, something may be coming.
- You can leave the System set to “ON” (1 or | is On) 100% of the time and ignore it.
- Furnace: this tells the brain that when there's a request for heat (hot water and/or the thermostat saying that "it's too cold in here" is a request for heat), fulfill that request for heat by turning on the Espar burner and burning diesel to heat glycol. Any request for heat will also come with the glycol circulation pump running. You can hear this as a light buzz from the bench seat area.
- You can leave the Furnace set to “ON” (1 or | is On) 100% of the time and ignore it.
- The only time you set Furnace to “OFF” while using heat is when you are connected to shore power with the 120V water heater switch ON and want to use shore power only as a heat source with no diesel backup.
- Hot water: this is basically a switch that just requests the glycol pump to run and the furnace to fire, only if furnace is selected.
- Fan: this switch tells the system to turn the fans on if there's a request for heat via the “Rixens Inc” thermostat directly below the "4 switch" panel. If the thermostat set temperature is above the interior temperature, the fan will start automatically with the heat (glycol pump will run and furnace will fire). If the thermostat set temperature is below the interior temperature, the fans will shut off and the call for heat will go away. Just like “System,” you can leave the fan set on "II" and forget about it. If the thermostat is set to a low temperature, heat (and fan) will not run. Use the thermostat to control interior heating and forget about the fan switch.
- 120V water heater switch- separate from the Rixen panel: this activates a heating coil in the glycol tank when you are connected to shore power. It CANNOT heat water via battery power. It can replace or augment the use of diesel to create heat.
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- If you have this ON and you are connected to shore power, it will ALWAYS be heating the contents of the glycol storage tank REGARDLESS of any of the above switches/conditions. If you have the furnace switch off and calls for heat are met (hot water or air thermostat), then the glycol pump will run.
- Turn it ON if you want to use electric heating. When plugged into shore power, if you turn this switch ON, the electric heating element will heat the glycol in the heating system constantly.
- Leave this switch OFF unless you are plugged into shore power and want to heat the glycol via electricity.
- Note that if plugged into a 15A outlet, you must wait until the batteries are fully charged before turning this switch ON or you will pull more than 15A via the shore power cord and will overload the circuit breaker for the plug you are plugged into.
- This replaced the infamous “paddle switch”.
- For hot water to work via the diesel furnace, you need to activate the "system", "furnace", and "hot water" switches. For hot water to work via shore power, you need to activate the "120V hot water" switch, along with "system" and "hot water".
With the following configuration, you can control all your functions with the "Hot Water" switch and Rixen air temperature thermostat:
- System ON/I
- Furnace ON/I
- Fan II/I
The code reader, labeled “Espar,” is located in the lower right corner of the control panel and was previously under the seat. Ignore the code reader unless you have an issue and someone tells you how to use it to read error codes. It is normal for this to be OFF when the system switch is on, and vice versa when the system switch is off. This is NOT used to set heater temperature, regardless of what it says on the screen.