Camco 42150 RV Furnace & Water Heater Vent Bug Screen

Here's a problem every RV owner runs into eventually. You park the rig for a few weeks, and while it sits, a mud dauber finds the open water heater vent and gets to work. By the time you're ready to roll again there's a nest packed into the burner tube, the pilot won't stay lit, and you're pulling the access panel in a campground trying to figure out what went wrong. The Camco 42150 stops that whole story before it starts.

It's a simple stainless steel screen that sets over the outside of your furnace, water heater, or battery vent and keeps flying and crawling pests out. Wasps and mud daubers are the usual culprits, but birds and rodents will move into an open vent just as fast, and their nests block the airflow these appliances need to run safely. A clogged furnace vent can shut the unit down. Once a nest sets up inside the flue, clearing it usually means removing the appliance cover and digging it out by hand, which is exactly the chore this little screen prevents. This screen keeps the opening clear while the appliance still breathes.

Fitment is the whole point with a part like this, so let's be specific. The 42150 is sized for Suburban furnace models 8525, 8531, 8535, and 8940, and it fits Suburban 6, 10, and 12 gallon water heater vents. It works on most standard battery vents too. The screen measures 4-1/2 inches long by 4-1/2 inches wide by 1-5/16 inches deep, which matches the common square RV appliance vent opening. If your water heater or furnace uses that louvered square vent, this is the screen that fits it.

Camco built it out of stainless steel, and that matters more than it sounds. These vents live on the outside wall of the coach, exposed to rain, road spray, and sun all day. Cheaper mesh rusts and falls apart in a season or two. Stainless holds up. It also won't discolor or stain the sidewall the way a rusting screen can. You get a screen you can leave in place year-round without babying it, and the open weave doesn't choke down the vent the way a fine bug net would.

Installation is about as easy as RV maintenance gets. The 42150 comes with two spring fasteners and a small installation tool, so you're not hunting for extra hardware and you're not drilling anything. The screen sets over the vent, the spring fasteners hold it, and you're done in a couple of minutes per vent. There's nothing to wire and no sealant to cure. If you can hang a picture on a wall, you can mount this. It's a job a first-time owner can handle from a step stool, and the English and French instructions are right there in the box.

One note on what you're getting. This is a single screen, model WH200, not a multi-pack, so count your vents before you order. A typical travel trailer has at least a water heater vent and a furnace vent, and plenty have a separate battery box vent as well. Ordering one per opening is how you actually seal the coach against pests. And because they're inexpensive and identical in size across these applications, it's easy to keep a spare in the storage bay for the day one goes missing on the highway.

Who's this for? Anybody who stores their RV between trips, which is most of us. It's cheap insurance for the spring de-winterizing checklist, and it's the kind of thing you wish you'd installed before the wasps found the vent, not after. Close off the water heater, furnace, and battery vents and you've sealed the easy entry points that cause some of the most common and most annoying appliance service calls. For around fifteen dollars, it saves you a nest-clearing headache down the road.