Baby, It's Cold Inside

[billroper]

Inside the shower, in any case, because the hot water heater is now completely dead with the failure of a different part than the one that originally failed and that we were working around. Because there is nothing like lighting the pilot a whole lot of times to convince the gas valve to fail.

Comments

Do you know this old joke?

[patoadam]

Old joke:

Why aren't homeowners communists?

Because they don't have the time.

[rinioth.livejournal.com]

I'm just surprised that any water heater still has a pilot light. In Europe they have been effectively banned for about 20 years due to them being dangerous and wasting energy.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

A pilot light does not inherently waste energy in a water heater, because the heat from the pilot goes to keeping the water hot.

Pilot lights are dead simple, and those of us who have the subversive idea that they shouldn't have to replace their appliances every 5-10 years like dead simple. There's an additional reason to prefer pilot lights in water heaters. Electronic ignition requires electric power to the water heater, which means that when the power goes out you can't start the heater. I live in the country with my own well now, so when my electricity is out I don't have water either, but when I lived in the city I learned that (1) the water is much more reliable than the power, and (2) although it's not pleasant to live without electricity, it's a lot worse to live without hot water.

[whl.livejournal.com]

Yeah; while I've never had to live through a power failure of more than a day, I have had cause to consider things like whether or not the gas furnace really needs the electric fan, and how the thermostat is getting knocked down line current fed to it.