For heaters to work, they need to be able to pull air from behind them, which is called air proving. If your heater is too close to a wall, or if something gets sucked to the back of the heater, this could pose a fire hazard or damage the unit.
How the Safety Feature Protects You and the Heater
Fortunately, our 400,000 BTU direct fired heaters have a safety built into them that causes them to shut off automatically if they are unable to prove air. Watch the video below for more details:
Transcript: So to also demonstrate how important this air proving switch is, is that, when this unit fires up, and while it’s running, you’ll see if this unit’s too close to a wall, or something gets sucked to the back of it, how the safeties on these units are built to protect the customers and the unit itself.
So I’ll turn the unit on. The unit’s running, so what I’ll demonstrate is how important this air proving switch is, when I go to block the air, or something gets clogged in the back or it’s too close to the wall; the unit will shut off. It’s a safety built onto the unit so the burner shuts off immediately. Now, I’ll pull this back off. Now, if the red light come on, all you do is turn it off, and it will come right back on again.
So there’s all sorts of safeties built onto all of our units to allow you to protect yourself, your unit, and the area you are heating.
Clearing the Air Proving Switch on the 400,000 BTU Direct Fired Heater
Another factor that can impact your heater’s ability to prove air is the buildup of dust in the unit.
Direct fired construction heaters are made for industrial sites, but excessive dust can damage them and affect their performance.
If your heater stops working and there is a great deal of dust in the air, you may need to clear out dust that has built up in the machine’s air proving switch.
How to Clean Dust Buildup Out of Your Unit
Check out the video below to learn how to get your 400,000 BTU heater back up and running:
Transcript: So the biggest problem we have a lot of the time with these units is high dust in construction environments. Now, they are construction heaters, but excessive amounts of dust can cause problems, especially when the initial start-up of these units need that air proving to tell it the condition to burn.
So what I tell the customers to do is to take this panel up, lift at the top. Right here, this little diaphragm here has an accordion inside of there. It’s an air proving switch, so when the air’s being pulled in from the fan, it’s being sucked up through this hose here and right into the diaphragm. So what I tell people when it’s an extremely dusty environment, I’ll have them pull off the hose and they’ll actually blow into the end of the hose to allow the accordion to free up any dust that’s in there. You reattach, close it back up. You can retest it on manual to make sure it freed up the air-proving switch–and you got fire.
To learn more about our temporary heaters for construction sites, visit our construction heaters page.