Camco 42142 Atwood Hydroflame Furnace Bug Screen FUR300

Here's a problem every RV owner runs into eventually. You park the rig for a few weeks, come back, fire up the furnace, and it won't light. Or it lights and there's a burning smell you can't place. Nine times out of ten the culprit is a mud dauber or a wasp that built a nest right inside the furnace vent while you weren't looking. Those nests block airflow, clog the burner, and can turn a simple weekend into a service appointment.

The Camco 42142 furnace vent bug screen is the cheap insurance that stops all of that. It's a stainless steel mesh cover, model FUR300, built to fit the Atwood Hydroflame 8500 series furnace with an access door. The screen sits over the vent opening and keeps flying insects from getting in and setting up shop, while still letting the furnace breathe the way it's supposed to.

Why does an insect nest cause so much trouble? An RV furnace pulls combustion air and pushes exhaust through that sidewall vent. When a mud dauber packs mud into the passage, the furnace can't move air correctly. You get delayed ignition, sooting, nuisance lockouts, and in a bad case the burner never fires at all. A few square inches of stainless mesh in front of the opening heads off the whole chain of problems before it starts.

Stainless steel is the right material for this job. This screen sits outside on the sidewall of your coach, exposed to rain, road spray, and sun, season after season. A cheaper screen would rust and fall apart in a couple of years. This one won't. The heavy-duty stainless mesh holds its shape, resists corrosion, and keeps doing its job whether you're camped in desert heat or a damp coastal campground.

Install is about as easy as it gets. There's no drilling and no tools to fuss with. The screen is sized to the 8500 series vent, 4-7/8 inches long by 4-1/2 inches wide by 1-1/8 inches deep, so it seats right over the opening on furnaces built with the access door. If you've got the matching furnace, you clip it on and you're done. Takes a minute, maybe two.

Who needs one? Honestly, anyone with an Atwood Hydroflame 8500 furnace who stores the RV between trips. Snowbirds who park for the season, weekend campers who go a few weeks between outings, and anyone who's already fought a wasp nest once and doesn't want to do it again. It's the kind of small part that saves you a real headache down the road. We'd rather sell you a fifteen-dollar screen now than have you chasing a furnace lockout at the campsite later.

A quick word on upkeep. Give the screen a look at the start of each season and knock off any leaves, pollen, or spider webbing that's collected on the mesh. Keeping it clear lets the vent breathe freely, and that's really all the maintenance it needs. The package ships as a single screen with an English and French language label, so it's ready to go right out of the box.

One thing worth being straight about. This screen keeps bugs and debris out, but it isn't a winterizing cover and it isn't meant to seal the vent against water by design. It's a bug barrier, plain and simple, and that's exactly what most owners need. If you're already chasing an ignition problem and the vent has a nest packed inside, clear that out first, then add the screen to keep it from coming back. For the price of a couple cups of coffee, it's one of the smartest small upgrades you can make to protect your RV's heating system.