Sooner or later, things start to deteroiate in your RV. I have often said; "if you are not breaking it, you are not using it". On the first RV trip of the season for us, we setup at the RV park, turned on the propane, lit the stove - and hardly no gas! At first I thought it might just be air in the line as I just had both tanks filled.

But when I went outside to investigate, I smelled gas. Bad news! I immediately turned the tanks off so I could make the RV safe, then started to look into it further.

Telltale propane issues. If you experience any or all of these symptoms, you likely have a propane leak.

• Low flame on the stove.
• Appliances will not light - especially those at the far end of the propane line.
• Error codes such as DSI or others from either water tank or fridge (if it is on propane).
• Yellow flame on the stove.
• Propane leak detector going off.
• And of course... if you smell gas.

Any of these symptoms are serious, and you must turn the propane off at the tanks until the problem is remedied.

I was able to find the problem by using the soapy water method. This method consists of filling a cup with a couple of ounces of water, then a few drops of dish soap to make a soap slurry. Then with a brush or other instrument, apply the slurry to the suspected hose or fitting. If air bubbles occur (with pressure in the line), you will see bubbles forming at the leak.

After discovering the leak was in the pigtail (the short piece of hose from the propane regulator to the tank), I contacted a propane technician to perform the repair. Again I must stress that only a qualified propane technician should work on your propane system.

Pigtails come in a variety of sizes and lengths. Typically lengths vary from 15" to 24", although other sizes can be found. Pigtails may also be jacketed with a stainless steel braid, although they may be slightly more expensive.

Most pigtails do come with CSA and UL listing, but there are many that do not. In fact, the pigtail that failed on my RV did not look to be UL listed. I don't know if that was the reason for the failure or not.

Regardless, I highly recommend buying a UL listed pigtail.

Pigtails for portable propane tank use typcially have a high-flow ACME nut for the tank end. As well, most pigtails for RV use fall into one of two size fittings. Either a 1/4" NPT (National Pipe Thread), sometimes called MNPT (Male NPT), or 1/4" Male Inverted Flare. Oddly enough, my RV has both (the driver's side has a Inverted Flare and the curbside a NPT fitting.

While I don't recommend repairing a propane system yourself, I highly recommend carrying the appropriate pigtail with you. You don't want to be in the situation where you cannot find the correct pigtail at the local hardware store.

So how do you tell if you have a 1/4" NPT or Flare fitting? The Flare fitting should fit a 1/2" open end wrench, while the NPT fitting should be too large to slip the wrench on it.

Of course, test this without loosening the fitting.

I suppose there are exceptions to this for some pigtail mfgs, but it works for my RV.

About a month after fixing the first leak, we discovered we were using a lot of propane from the curb-side tank; about twice as normal. So I figured, another leak?

I used some propane detect solution - essentially soapy water - and dabbed all of the fittings, and nope - it does not show a leak. Then to be double sure, I bought a Camco Propane Leak Detector (59023), and sure enough - I have a leak. The leak must be awfully small as it didn't seem to interfere with the stove working, nor was it detected with soapy water. But the Camco detector sure told me there was a leak.

I did a second test on the road-side, and the pressure held. This tells me the issue is between the switch-over regulator and curb-side tank. OK, maybe not so bad - only 4 parts (crossover hose, regulator, pigtail, and the tank itself).

Unfortunately, since soapy water did not detect the leak, the only option was to "shotgun" the problem by replacing parts. This can be expensive - at least if the first or second replaced part did not fix the problem.

I first replaced the pigtail thinking that if the road-side one was bad, perhaps the curb-side one was as well. However, it did not exhibit the severe cracking the road-side pigtail had, and unfortunately, that did not fix the problem.

Next, I did a bit of research on the 30psi regulator. Seems there have been a lot of reliability issues with them - especially since they are UL listed, which seems problematic to me. At any rate, it was next to be replaced, and voila! it fixed the problem.

While I have no more issues at this point, I am thinking of replacing the crossover hose after camping season, and try and secure the regulator a bit better. The crossover hose has a severe bend in it from the factory, and it is likely going to give me problems at some point.