RV Stove, Oven and Cooktop Repair in Yorba Linda

A correctly burning propane flame is blue with a defined inner cone. Yellow, lazy, floating flames mean the air to gas mixture is wrong, and there are three usual causes.

First, a partly blocked orifice. The orifice is a precisely drilled jet that meters gas flow, and the hole is small enough that a spider web, a dust deposit or a cooking spill can restrict it. Spiders in particular are drawn to the smell of the odourant added to propane and build in burner tubes with impressive persistence. Cleaning is the repair and it should be done without enlarging the orifice, which permanently ruins it.

Second, the air shutter. The burner draws primary air through an adjustable shutter, and one that has drifted closed or become blocked starves the flame of air. It is adjustable and it should be set to a clean blue flame with no lifting.

Third, supply pressure. Too low and the flame is weak and yellow. Too high and it lifts off the burner and roars. Both are regulator faults, and both affect every propane appliance in the coach at once. That is why we manometer test the system pressure before adjusting individual burners.

• Yellow floating flame on one burner: orifice or air shutter on that burner
• Yellow flame on all burners: supply pressure or regulator
• Flame that lifts off the burner and roars: pressure too high
• Soot on pans and around the burner: incomplete combustion, address immediately
• Burner that lights and goes out when released: thermocouple or flame sensor

That is the flame supervision device working, and on RV cooktops it is usually a thermocouple. The thermocouple sits in the flame and generates a small voltage from heat, which holds a safety valve open. When the flame goes out the voltage falls and the valve closes, cutting gas supply. It exists so a blown out burner cannot fill a coach with propane.

A burner that will not stay lit means the thermocouple is not generating enough voltage. That is either a failed thermocouple, one that is out of position and not sitting properly in the flame, one whose tip is coated with carbon, or a weak flame from an orifice or pressure problem that cannot heat it adequately.

The order of investigation matters. Replacing a thermocouple on a burner with a restricted orifice produces a new thermocouple that still will not hold, and the owner concludes the part was faulty. Flame quality is assessed first, then the sensor.

Because they are small, thinly insulated, and heated by a single burner at the bottom with no fan. Household ovens have distributed elements, better insulation and often convection. An RV oven has none of that, so the temperature gradient from bottom to top is severe by design.

That said, some of what owners experience is a fixable fault. The oven thermostat is a capillary type sensing bulb in the oven cavity, and it drifts with age, so the dial and the actual temperature diverge. We check with a calibrated probe and adjust or replace, which frequently resolves complaints of burning on the bottom.

The other common issue is a partly blocked oven burner or a flame that is not distributing evenly along the burner tube. Cleaning restores it. Beyond that, the practical answers are a baking stone or a diffuser plate to spread the bottom heat, and an oven thermometer so you cook to the actual temperature rather than the dial.