I'm new to campers. I have a new-to-me old (1995) popup that the previous owners added an air/heat roof unit to a year or so ago. I camped with the kids in the driveway last week and the propane furnace worked great. Several hours into the experience I decided to turn the roof unit heat on to blow the heat around better and to add a bit of additional heat.

I woke to a "plastic burning" smell that was intense, and there was smoke outside. I turned off the roof unit immediately. The smell was mostly gone, but not completely. I'm pretty mechaniclly inclined, but this sounds like the heat element option in the roof unit was either installed improperly by the previous owners, or there is something I should have know to remove before using it. Any advice?

gonna move this to ask a dealer so you will get a better response from a expert!! good question, we have the heat strip in our too, i love it but we also us a small heater inside

Sounds like you just burnt out your heating element in the A/C unit. I try and sell against the heat strips that is put into A/C units because all they will do is knock the chill off and cause problems. It is a small heating coil just like in electric heater. If you do not want to use the propane or scared of using it as some folks then pick up a nice little electric heater from a discount store and plug it in and it works nicely. Just make sure no one touches it and gets burnt from the heater.

Best of luck.

add me to the scared to use propane club.. I am afraid we will blow up the popup.. or should I say I am afraid of Jeff blowing it up...lol Love ya honey if you read this

Get a small ceremic heater at walmart, works great, we have one that shuts off if tipped over or overheats

I use to be afraid of propane until I worked where gas grills were made. I got use to them and learned about them. As long as you are wise with them and keep them up there is not much problems with them, I even rebuilt my stove in the first camper. I have seen a lot of junk campers but never one that blew up. If one did blow up I bet it would nook like one of the old jiffy pop type popcorn trays. But there is a lot of safety type cutoff built in to the propane stuff today.