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

[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.