Transcend Xplor 261BH poor heat circulation

Kljones77

Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2020
Messages
12
Just purchased our first Grand Design and am very excited about it. Unfortunately, the furnace is in the back of the rig and only seems to heat the bathroom which is in the back as well. There's two other ducts - one under the dining room table (middle) and in the bedroom (up front). Both have minimal air coming out. Enough to put out a lighter but no appreciable heat. The dealer is telling us that this is a design flaw that we are stuck with. We couldn't get the trailer above 55 degrees camping last weekend with an outside low of 15 degrees. The furnace literally ran all night. Is this common with Grand designs? Any ideas on how to fix? Is it possible to add supplemental heat without a little buddy/electric heater?

Thanks in advance for any tips!
 
That doesnt sound normal. If it were me, I'd try to inspect as much of the ducting as possible for either leaks or kinked ducting.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
Thanks - I agree. I need to double check if the dealer actually checked the ducting. I imagine that's more labor but was my first thought.
 
Heat flow problem.

Hi we just got our camper as well! We were out this weekend and found we had the same issues with heating the bathroom but not the rest of the camper! Please let me know if you find anything out!
 
It’s been a huge hassle but I was able to get grand design to authorize the dealer to inspect the hvac system. That involves dropping out the bottom of the trailer which is a few hours labor. I took the trailer to another repair shop who recommended adding an additional hvac line to the middle of the trailer (cheap except for cost of dropping out the bottom) or replacing the heater with a higher btu unit (expensive and may void warranty). I have an appointment with the dealer in mid December to see what they can do. We love everything else on our grand design but this hugely disappointing!
 
How did your appointment in mid-December go? I'm asking because I have the exact same problem with my 2021 261BH. The dealer has already dropped the bottom and said that there are no kinks in the ductwork....but also that the it's only a 1/2" duct running up to the front bedroom! I've never heard of a 1/2" duct before, and find it hard to believe. I talked to Grand Design and they said that isn't a thing and that it needs to be looked at again. I'm trying to schedule with the dealer again, but they want to wash their hands of it. Just wondering how you made out with yours?
 
How did your appointment in mid-December go? I'm asking because I have the exact same problem with my 2021 261BH. The dealer has already dropped the bottom and said that there are no kinks in the ductwork....but also that the it's only a 1/2" duct running up to the front bedroom! I've never heard of a 1/2" duct before, and find it hard to believe. I talked to Grand Design and they said that isn't a thing and that it needs to be looked at again. I'm trying to schedule with the dealer again, but they want to wash their hands of it. Just wondering how you made out with yours?

The size should be 2-inch. From what I can tell your furnace is under the rear bunk. That is a pretty long run all the way to the front bedroom wall. RV furnaces are not very efficient to begin with. Asking it to force warm air from the farthest corner to the front bedroom is a lot to ask; even more if it is cold out.
 
Hi we just got our camper as well! We were out this weekend and found we had the same issues with heating the bathroom but not the rest of the camper! Please let me know if you find anything out!

You didn't indicate what trailer you have. It may be relative to where your heater is located and the heat register that doesn't have much airflow.

You may want to look at a post I made in the thread located here - Post #10 .

https://www.mygrandrv.com/forum/showthread.php/32748-Heating-system

There were some fixes I had to make to my heating system.
 
How did your appointment in mid-December go? I'm asking because I have the exact same problem with my 2021 261BH. The dealer has already dropped the bottom and said that there are no kinks in the ductwork....but also that the it's only a 1/2" duct running up to the front bedroom! I've never heard of a 1/2" duct before, and find it hard to believe. I talked to Grand Design and they said that isn't a thing and that it needs to be looked at again. I'm trying to schedule with the dealer again, but they want to wash their hands of it. Just wondering how you made out with yours?

It took two visits and a couple calls to GD company. The dealer took the bottom out and redid the ducting. They changed the 4 inch duct going to the tanks below to a 2 inch duct and made it a longer run (to pull less heat below). They changed the bathroom to a 2 inch I believe since all the heat poured out there. And changed the dinette/front bedroom to a 4 inch. It works a little better overall but I still can't get the until to 60 degrees in cold weather. I'm still not satisfied. A third party repair shop suggested running a separate line to the dinette (currently the dinette and front bedroom are part of one line). The dealer wouldn't do this for me. The repair shop also suggested a more powerful furnace but this will be expensive (>$1500). I'm not sure the next step - I'm going to talk to the dealer and GD again. I had a fantastic 3 season trailer and bought this unit being sold on the GD 4 season package. By no means has this trailer lived up to that statement. Let me know what you come up with. If you DM me, I can send the HVAC diagram for the Transcend Xplor 261BH.
 
Kljones77 , same issue here. Would you be willing to share that HVAC diagram with me as well? I tried to request via PM but it wont let me... any help is much appreciated!
 
This forum doesn’t easily allow for direct communication. There is a dealer approved fix for this issue. I’m also paying to put in a 35k btu furnace to replace the 30k stock furnace. It’s the same size. Hopefully I’ll finally get the trailer to heat up.
 
Grand Design Transcend 261BH - Ducting.jpg

I'm new here so hopefully my attachment came through. It is a diagram of the factory layout of the Transcend 261BH furnace and AC ducting. I also have an issue with the furnace ducting. Approximately 98% of the heat comes out in the bathroom vent. Almost none comes out in the bedroom (up front) or under the dinette table (in the middle). What does not make sense is that all of the ducting is 3" except for the line to the bedroom off of the "T" (it is 1-1/2"). With this set up there is very little resistance in the line to the bathroom so almost all of the flow is going to go this direction. The bathroom line should be 1-1/2" and the rest should be 3" (need to cause more resistance in this short line to make up for the resistance in the rest of the ducting due to the long length). This is simple physics (or simple flow issue). I am working with GD right now to get this issue rectified (this is a bad design issue or improper build - however, in seeing all of the people on here that have the same issue I believe this is a design issue). I might add that I am a Mechanical Engineer and understand this issue very well (if this were my design problem I would fess up and have it corrected).
 
Thanks for figuring out how to post the HVAC diagram. There is a GD authorized repair. I believe they use dedicated 2 inch lines to the dinette and the front bedroom. My dealer also adjusted the bathroom and under duct flow to try and even things out. Sorry for lack of details - all this HVAC stuff is new to me. I also installed a 35k BTU furnace and that made a huge difference. It's the same size as the factory installed 30k BTU. It did cost me an extra $1000 but I want to use the trailer in freezing weather so it was worth it to me.
 
Thank you!!!!! I am hopeful to get my issue resolved as well, I think this will be very helpful.
 
Transcend Xplor 261BH poor heat tinkering

I was digging in our 2018 261BH trying to get the heat (flow) a bit better and found nearly 4' of extra ducting leading to the bedroom. It was all wadded up in the area where it penetrates the floor under the sink. It was kinked in multiple places. Now it is clear why we were not getting heat in the bedroom. My next step is to seal up the furnace better as I could identify multiple leaking joints in the area.
Does anyone have a good method to seal the furnace joints?

https://hosting.photobucket.com/ima..._144304887.jpg?width=450&height=278&crop=fill
 
1735667617451.png

I picked up a 2021 261BH last spring and sure enough first time running the heat found the Bathroom to heat up to over 100 F and no heat in the bedroom. After checking and I finding this thread I started digging in to the problem. First I would like to thank rraley for posting the vent drawing. What I found was a different set up and other issues. I updated the drawing supplied by rraley to show the layout of duct work on my trailer.

First off my trailer has 5 ducts coming off the furnace. 4 x 4" ducts, run to the bathroom, to the front bedroom under the belly, to the dinette table and one running to the under belly as well as another 2" duct running under the belly to the other side of the table. The Bedroom duct was a complete mess as they ran the 4" duct over the slide out rails between the rails and floor (about 2.5" space) and it was ripped open as well as the duct had a cut in the wall between the furnace and bathroom as it was too short and they just stretched it until it ripped. The 4" duct run to the bathroom moved the most air (heat) as it was the shortest run.

To correct the above I installed a damper at the furnace on the bathroom line, at fully closed it was still blowing a good amount of air (heat) to the bathroom. I removed the duct running over the slide out rails and installed semi-ridge duct bent into a oval shape to clear the rails but still have the volume of the 4" duct. These modifications helped in above freezing temperatures 40F, but we used the trailer for a few days during the holidays at 5F over night and the furnace was struggling and the trailer had many cold spots, mainly the bedroom as all the duct work under the floor was being cooled too much by the low temperatures to provide a large temperature rise to heat the room.

I'm thinking this summer to make some major modifications to the duct work and try run the majority of the duct in the heated area. For example in the bathroom the water lines to the vanity run in a covered box in between the shower and the vanity, I'm thinking to T off the bathroom duct and run a line to the vanity in the box in to mount a vent to the living area between the bathroom wall and the slide out to add more heat to the living area. As well maybe run a 4" duct along the same route as the first vent under the table then add a box in between the bench's to add another 4" vent into the shoe storage rack to heat the front by the main door. I could use the belly vent line to supply this run and then use the current 2" duct to heat the under belly. When camping in low temperatures we dry camp anyway as it is too much to re-winterize the trailer for a few days of use anyway.

In short this trailer is not cold weather ready as they suggest. We found the front wall to be very cold and they claim that the front is R40 like the roof. As for the claim that the underbelly is R11 I would like to know how a 1/4" plastic corrugated sheet has R11 rating? Unless they forgot to install the insulation in the underbelly as my trailer has nothing other then the corrugated sheet on the underbelly.

If anyone has done any modifications to the duct work I would appreciate details on what was done and how it worked out for you. Not looking to make this trailer a -20F rig just would like to extend the use of it during the "warmer" weather AKA above 0F. Thanks.
 

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