grar

[rmd]

so, i made dinner this evening, and claudia is a bit later than expected, so i went to turn the oven on to heat it a bit to put the dinner in to stay warm ... and no *whoomf* of igniting gas.

a bit of investigation later, it looks like my pilot light went out some unknown time ago. wtf. the stovetop burners also have pilot lights, so the gas concentration couldn't get *too* out of hand. (iirc natural gas is lighter than air while propane is heavier.) still. that's disturbing.

i re-lit the pilot light, and it's going on as it should, but the rest of the oven burner doesn't ignite when i turn the knob. i can hear the gas flow, so i assume it's just things being slightly clogged or something. i'll poke at it some other time. for now, the pilot's going and that's enough to assuage my safety concerns.

i was in sears a while back ogling appliances and noticed that they had some sexy looking 30" stoves that are electric ignition. perhaps it's time to reconsider this. (i would've already have done so except that electric ignition requires a plug and if i'm going to run a plug to that point, i may as well pull up another couple of circuits and make it so i can run the microwave and the electric kettle at the same time, and if i'm doing *that*, then, really, why not just pull down those fugly '1985 somerville lumber' cabinets and knock the walls back to the studs so i can insulate and so on and so on.) soooo. yeah. time to look into that again.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're about to succumb to a rather bad case of "shipwright's disease." :-/ Good luck.

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

i've got a yak around here somewhere that needs to lose its winter coat....

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, we got yaks a plenty over here. boy howdy.

YAK-FEST 2011.

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

Sounds like its time to call an appliance repair guy, and take some engineer's pills.

[dhs.livejournal.com]

Glad you & your house didn't go BOOM!

Yak shaving... Why does electrical work lead to replacing cabinets?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

because i'll have to make holes in the walls and if i'm fixing the walls i may as well tear the wall covering off and put up nice drywall instead of the crap paneling there, and so that means i should pull down the cabinets.

[muffyjo]

So...
1. Move all things from one side of kitchen
2. Tear down wall.
3. Add wiring & Insulation
4. Close wall back up.
5. Buy new stove with Electric Starter thingy
6. Plug gas stove in.

Ok. Got it. Well, I may be unemployed on July 2nd...can offer daytime help then? Otherwise, I'm happy to donate some weekend time (and yes, DONATE. Ok, might settle for tea and cookies).

[muffyjo]

Oh, right, cabinetry, that goes in there somewhere. Probably step 4.5 :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

what may happen is:
1. get a plumber to disconnect the stove and move it to a corner of the kitchen.
2. cower from the scariness behind and under the stove for a while, then clean the fuck out of it.
3. make holes in the walls and pull a new home run up from the basement for a 20A circuit
4. do some stuff with wires.
5. put up a piece of something nice as a stove backsplash.
6. get stove. (iirc, sears claims that they will remove your old appliance when they deliver a new one)
7. have plumber connect new stove.

i avoid the cabinetry step for now, since i'd rather not risk ending up with mismatched cabinets and i really don't want to do the whole damned kitchen now.

of course, this would be happening at the same time that the endlessly slow project of wrangling the front room (currently in process) goes on.
(what's going on there:
1. tear up some carpet. (done)
2. move a bunch of trash out of the basement (done, and i will dump some of it in a dumpster today, in fact)
3. clear off the big shelves in the front room
4. move the big shelves from upstairs to the basement (optionally reconfiguring them into 2 shorter shelves instead of one tall one)
5. haul lots of crap from upstairs to downstairs.
6. move a lot of other stuff around in the front room so i can tear up the carpet there.
7. figure out what i want to happen to the floor and make it happen (sanding, area rugs, etc. this may involve bringing in a professional to deal with some of it. there may be a subproject of rewiring part of the room and having someone install a pocket door)
8. NEW COUCH!
9. assemble the front room into a new state of awesomeness.)

[muffyjo]

Damn woman, you are impressive! I look forward to tea in the front room then!

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!

[cz_unit]

Odd day for appliances; the fuse on my dishwasher blew (15a bi-metalic). Can I use an ATE class fuse rated at 15a temporarily?

C

[rmd.livejournal.com]

hm. i don't know for sure.

[blackanvil.livejournal.com]

If it's an old gas burner, it probably needs a good cleaning if you don't want to replace the stove. Food, soot, random cruft, and ash tends to accumulate in and around the small holes. I've resurrected old gas appliances for the workshop by partial disassembly, cleaning out all the gunk, and reassembling, but if you want a new stove, go for it. It will probably pay for itself by not running pilot lights constantly, plus will most likely have thermocouple-based auto-shut-off to prevent explosions.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah - my first thought was "well, i'll give it a cleaning and it'll be happier" (which I've done for the stovetop burners - one of them wasn't running well and i cleaned it and it was happier), but then i thought "wait, this isn't just 'not working', this is 'FAILING IN A WAY THAT POTENTIALLY INTRODUCES EXPLOSIONS'" and so, yeah, maybe it's time to think about a new stove. :)

[muffyjo]

thermocouple-based auto-shut-off
Sounds suspiciously like a cross between thermonuclear war and a flux capacitor.

I do realize it's real, I just am enjoying the whimsy of the idea of her kitchen suddenly traveling back in time and playing old video games until it gets back to the future. Maybe that explains how the pilot went out in the first place.