20 Most Recent Mr. Heater Big Buddy Heater Questions & Answers

HI try mr heater wed site there has been some recalls on these heaters , it sounds like you had too much pressure going to the heater , or the gas valve was faulty, hope this helps

When the pilot lights continue holding the button down for a full minute and then release. It should stay lit then to allow you to turn it to the on position. If the pilot will not stay lit after holding it for the full minute, then the thermocouple will need to be replaced.
Hope this helps.

mr heater makes a whistling sound as gas escapes around the gasket of the ceramic heating elements, that is ,all around the outside edges of the ceramic heating elements. You can find out exactly where the gas leak is , by pressing down on the outside edges of the ceramic elements with a big, longslotted (flat bladed) screwdriver while mr heater is running and hot. The screwdriver needs to be long enough so that you dont burn your hands [the longer & bigger the screwdriver, the better] & it does not hurt to wear heavy gloves too, because it gets very hot, very fast in front of mr heater.The thicker the blade of the screwdriver is, the less chance of damaging the ceramic heating element because a thick bladed screwdriver will not concentrate all the pressure in just 1 tiny point.You are not trying to crack the ceramic with a wood chisel.Dont press down so hard that you break the ceramic heating element, start by pressing down gently and gradually increasing pressure until you notice a change in the whistle or sparks comming out of the heating element as loose carbon depositscome out of the heating element and burn in the propaine flame.When you press down on one edge ,the other opposite edge may come up slightly, resulting in loose carbon deposits escaping and burning as sparks. also, you may not be pressing at the spot where the gas whistling is comming from and will need to move the screwdriver flat blade around the edges, here & there, to test for the effect of pressing down.When you press down on the outside edge where the diamonds stop, while mr heater is whisteling, the whisteling will stop & mr heater will run quite. Sometimes, just pushing down with the screwdriver will stop the whisteling ,for a while,and maybe a good long while. The big pain in the **** solution is to put a new gasket around the ceramic heating elements, but there is no guarantee that the new gasket will not whistle. Its a big ,nasty job, which I would rather not do--so I just push down with the screwdriver, to temporarly stop the whisteling, I guess it depends on how much the whisteling annoys you, as to if you want to go thru all the effort & expense of changing out the gaskets, without knowing if it will still whistle when you are done.Im just a diy guy that has 3 big buddys I keep going for 4 yrs now.I took one apart to look 4 the cause of the gas whistling, and then put it back together. Funny,it stopped whisteling & that was 3 yrs ago. I didnt put in any new parts. It may help ,a lot ,to increase the pressure with which the Mr heater ceramic is pressed down against the gasket material. This is accomplished by a heavy stainless steel wire that runs behind the ceramic heater element and goes through sheet metaltabs on each side of the ceramic mounting frame.You can bend the wire and the tabs,but only a little bit, and be very careful not to break the tabs because the tabs are not repairable, to increase the downwards pressure of the ceramic element against the gasket material. This may stop the gas whisteling--its a try & see thing, a finicky adjustment, that sometimes works& sometimes does not and sometimes, after a week or two, the ceramic might reseat itself against the gasket material and the whistling stop. Mine did stop whistling, but not until a couple of months after i did the job, due ,i think to reseating of the cermic against the gasket material. its try & see thing. also ,a gas tank that has higher than average gas pressure may start gas whistling up but the whistling will stop after you have burned up the higher pressure of the propaine.

has to do with gas pressure on high your losing heat to thermocoupler causing ignition to fail

depends on the size of the room

Push red button down to start, maybe 3 times, then push red button down HALF way down then turn to low. IT COULD BE YOUR PROPANE TANK, got a new one but had problems, so I left it on all night and it lit in the morning. BUT when I got it filled the next time the man said the stem in the tank might need to take it outside and bang the tank several times, stem in the top gets stuck a lot he said. But last is to take the tank outside and use a flat head screwdriver and turn the screw? on the side where the hose would be connected to let some out.

medium switch or its connecting wire is faulty,should be repair by an expert

you can use either the 1 pound bottles or the 20 pound, The hose that you screw into the Mr Heater, goes onto the connection that a 1 pound bottle would go on. The right side bottle is where I have mine connected, there are no leaks

try taking apart fan housing & look to see if fan blade is scraping the housing. next look to see if fan blade is secure to fan motor shaft.next look to see if fan motor bearings are worn egg shaped and try oiling fan motor bearings with sae 30.somewheres amoung all this inspecting of the fan motor, you will find the cause of the problem and learn what new parts you may need to buy to fix it.

tough one doug, easy way is buy a new gas valve under red knob.harder to try to fix old one.the stopage of your mister heater is caused by the pilot lite going outso what is causing the pilot lite to go out? that is the problem.inspect the pilot lite and its gas supply tube all the way up to the main gas valve under the red knob control valve. unscrew the pilot lite gas supply line from the main gas control valve and clean out interior of gas supply line all the way through the pilot lite orfice to the open air. It must be totally clean, .like new, including the pilotorface, in order to work properly.the least obstruction might deflector restrict the gas flow & cause poor or no opperation.when you unscrew the pilot lite gas supply line from the main gas valve,with a flashlight, look inside the hole, that the gas supply line was removed from. It may be full of gunk that has to be removed for gas to flow properly. try blowing out with compressed air with a straw tipped blow gun. you may need carburator cleaner to loosen the gunk ,if gunk is present.WARNING:::If you use carb. cleaner, it burns like gasoline, so make sure any carb cleaner is blowed of with compressed air or blotted up with facial tissue & totally dried up & removed before firing up mr heater, in order not to catch mr. heater on fire.If a lot of gunk is in the outlet of the main gas supply valve,you willneed a pocket screwdriver,a paper clip and maybe a sewing needle in order to pick out the crud. It must be totally clean inside, like new, in order to have a chance at working.It may still not work if more crud is inside the main gas control valve where you can not get to clean it out.if you reach the point where you decide to buy a new main gas control valve, first try disassembling your old main gas control valve and cleaning it out,like rebuilding a carb, and reassembling it. If this works,you dont need to buy a new main gas control valveand have saved 30.00 plus 12.95 shippingif it dont work,all it cost you was time & angervation.and you still need to buy a new main gas control valve.

I would first check the wiring connections to fan and get a multi meter , set on 12 volts dc and see if fan motor has 12 vdc input voltage.Too cheap to buy a voltage tester at wal mart ot harbor frieght, you can use a 12 volt bulb and socket, if you already have one. Remove fan wires & hook up 12 volt light bulb & if it lights, you got the juice. Carefull,dont let live wires touch because you short out $26.00 big buddy fan transformer. work with fan transformer unplugged from wall and dont plug in until you sure no wires touch.use electrical or duct tape. electrical tape better.otherwise,just buy the multi meter, they only $8.00 to $10.00read & understand instructions, before you try to use it. otherwise,you could burn out your new meter.well worth owning & learning to use multi meter. I use it thousands of times. if fan motor has juice but wont run, check fan shaft to see if it turns freely or scrapes or is stuck. oil fan motor bearings ,change the brushes. make sure that the fan blades are not touching the fan housing and can turn freely. if it still dont work, buy new fan motor.if no juice at fan motor, check mr heater switch with the power off,unplug transformer from the wall or remove batteries.,and use the ohm meter setting of the multi- meter to test for continuity of the switch when the switch is in the on position.power must be off when using the ohm setting of a multimeter.if power is on & using the ohm setting of the multi meter, you will blow out the multimeter. The ohm setting uses a 1.5 volt dc battery inside the multimeter to test for a compleated circuit.so, 12volts dc would blow it out on ohms setting. TESTING FOR OUTPUT OF FAN TRANSFORMER OR BATERY PACK.If the switch is good,reinstall it on mr.heater and test the output of the transformer or battery compartment using the 20 volt dc scale of the multi meter. the voltage scale you select ,must be higher than the voltage you expect to find ,in order to avoid damage to the multi meter.observe polarity,positive to red and negative to black. the dc voltmeter setting is totally polarity sensitive and a reversed hook up could blow out the meter.multi meter means it can read ac volts, dc volts,ohms and dc amps. Read and understand the included instructions before using a multi metera good single battery in new condition reads 1.62volts dc1.5 vdc is almost dead, a good used battery reads 1.58 to 1.6 vdcbelow 1.58 vdc is weak battery and 1.48 vdc is usually totally dead, but may be enough for momentary usage under 1 minute.