firewood

after 30 years in the natural gas industry.....obtw just retired. spent 20 years doing residential and 10 years commercial, institutional an industrial (big big big shit). CO is the silent killer yes, if founding some one get them to fresh air immediately. CO is heavier then air and u must be put in an oxygen tent to remove it from your blood. i have seen holes as big as your hand in heat exchange people have been using the furnace for years and nothing happened to them. A cracked heat exchanger is not good right but it depends on how many btus the furnace is. Some folks remove the vent pipe from their water heaters to use the heat seen that alot. A forced air furnace blows around the crack and when the furnace gets hot the CO goes out the vent, convection. So 1 way to tell is u have good venting u should feel cool air at the diverter. also if your run your hand around the vent pipe it should be hot all the way to the chimney. if the furnace is running and the vent pipe is cold theres a prob. also if u have ac power get a battery back up on your CO detectors also. if u buy a cheap CO detect they last bout 2 years if u have a good 1 they will warn u to take o/s to vent for awhile when getting older. all combustibles result in 2 things moisture and CO

1 more thing ventless heater have an oxygen depletion switch the thingy near the thermocouple and the manufacture states u have to have a source of fresh air to operate it as if u burn carbon monoxide u get carbon dioxide. so if they ventless heater will not lite or wont have flame it's prob the oxygen depletion switch.

Next best to a real fireplace or wood burner would be electric heat, I guess. But in some places, like where we live, the cost of electricity is very high. Not many around here have electric heat. Most use propane. Nearly everyone I know has gas logs or propane heaters.

It'e really nice having the pot bellied stove out in the shop.

I never thought about a oxygen depletion switch. I have three propane heaters in my shop. Two older ones and one rather new. Recently the new one's pilot keeps going out. I figured it was the thermocouple or the actual pressure regulator causing the problem because it would take for ever to relight it. It always appeared like there was air in the line but I don't see how that could be since the other heaters are just fine. I bet that new one has that switch you're talking about. But even so, my shop is not air tight. That's why three heaters. You get 10 feet away from one and it's cold. Still. I bet that switch if it's got one is doing it. Never thought about that possibility.

Yeah, it's ventless. I just leave it off until I'm in that area, then fire it up until warm. I'm just not sure it's the heater. It is on a different regulator and acts like air in the line. But T's off with one regulator supplying two and the other supplying the one that keeps going out. Either way it's going to take tearing it apart to fix which is why I just keep lighting it. Some times it takes for ever to light. Other times right off the bat. Nothing consistent.

use a manometer after the regulator propane should be 12 - 14 inch i think natural gas is 7-9 inch

That more or less confirms my suspicion that it might be the regulator because I think it was used with natural gas. I threw this one into service because the variable I had started leaking. Worked for awhile then started acting up like this.

Anyway......thanks for all the help everyone.

One of ours started doing that (pilot going out now and then) and I sprayed pressurized air around the nozzel area and now no problem. They often just get clogged with dust after not being used during the warm months. Was told this by our propane heater tech.

We live in an agricultural area - lots of dust flying around most of the time. Very difficult keeping the house clean. Anything with a filter must be cleaned every month . . .

at the propane store u can buy a different spring..... natural gas lower pressure bigger orifice liter spring. lp heavier spring more pressure smaller orifice iam pretty sure u can just change the spring on the regular, also 1 more thing 1st make sure the relief on the reg u r using is clean no spirer webs. it sounds like the way u r discribing it that the reg is locking up n wont pass

I'll look into that. I would have already bit the bullet if I didn't have two others working just fine. I'm just lazy!

1 more thing if the reg is a lp & nat gas regulator the cap on top of the body can be turned over. unscrew the cap n look 1 side or end is longer just flip it from where it was to start thatll change the spring pressure

Well I got tried of relighting the pilot all the time. One thing that came up here was that maybe there was some junk blocking the flow after a while. So one real cold morning I went outside where the regulator is and beat the snot out of it. Re lit the pilot and it has been on and working for 3 weeks now. Obviously there was something and I must have dislodged it. So see, being lazy works. Sometimes. I guess sometime in the future it will happen again and beating won't work. But for now I ain't touching it. Not sure I like the pilot being on all the time wasting propane now with the shortage.

Check!