I have a ’99 Bounder which has an Atwood L.P. Gas water heater. The water heater has served us well for a number of years, although I had to replace the electronic "brick" once, a few years ago.

We spend this past summer in Canada and it developed a new, odd behavior. Every week or two it would not come on and the amber warning light at the water heater switch would come on. The first time this happened I thought the "brick" had gone bad again, but this was not the case. I noticed that the spark-gap of the igniter had black "hair" bridging the gap. It looked similar to the appearance of iron filings on a magnet. I cleaned it off and everything returned to normal - for a week or two. This pattern continued throughout the summer and exists to this day. My question is: what changed? Maybe there is (was) some kind of plating on the spark-gap which has gone away? Pure guesswork on my part. I don’t want to spend the money (or time) looking for a replacement if that is not the reason for the problem.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Ed Cernek