i guess i’ve had it pretty easy, or maybe i’ve just been taking it easy, with needing to do repairs around the house. the biggest issue i’d/we’d had up to this weekend was the garbage disposal getting stuck.
well, on friday, the hot water wasn’t hot; the pilot light wasn’t lit; the pilot light wouldn’t stay lit… frantic text messages went out to the people that i call when things go unexpectedly. one suggested a plumber (i’m not sure why, since we were dealing with gas and fire), and another said “replace the thermo couple. medium difficulty, low cost.” it was kind of like an evaluation of a task in the sims or something… so, after a leisurely saturday morning, and a harried bike commute to brunch and ace hardware, we returned home, armed with a coiled up piece of copper.
after the gas was turned off, matt removed the front plate and pulled out all of the bits and we examined our situation.
the old couple had this weird disc attached (an overtemp sensor)… this doesn’t exist on the new one.
at this point, we took a break. do i call a plumber? do i call the repair number on the sticker? do i wait til monday?
it became broken in the process of removal, so we discarded it all together, probably making the heater as safe as the ones that were manufactured in the ’90s.
the next challenge was squeezing the couple through this orange plug in order to get it installed next to the pilot and gas outlet.
after quite a few tries, matt was able to coerce it through and we got it installed, only smelling gas after the first try. we re-seated the burner and matt was able to screw it in further. he followed the instructions for relighting, and everything went well! the tank was reheated in about a half hour.
fingers crossed everything stays working until i can get the flashing around the chimney fixed.
