Flex Monkey Patches

The pilot light burns on.

See the previous blog entries for more background info:
flexmonkeypatches-pilot-episode-on-mogulus
flexmonkeypatches-pilot-episode-recap

Of course it does! Now that someone is watching it around the clock.

I was seeking to find more evidence as to why it was going out so that the next time it did and we got a repairman in to do something about it, we would have some concrete data as to what the cause of failure is.

But…the pilot light burns on and the “Pilot episode” streaming on Mogulus lives on. In fact the “Pilot episode” may have some “new legs”. My wife, Pamela (http://www.starstryder.com/) and I just finished a Skype interview with Chris Vallance of BBC Radio 4′s iPM (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/) talking about this “Citizens Plumbing” project (a term applied to this by my wife in her blog entry: http://www.starstryder.com/2008/10/03/citizen-plumbing-its-not-quite-galaxy-zoo/).

So burn baby, burn…(although I’d rather have it go out so that I can hopefully figure out why and come to a resolution.)

-Kyle

-ps- I hope they cut most of my content out of the interview. My wife gives a much better interview than I do – better voice, presence and style.

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Well, the weekend has come and gone and the pilot light is still burning without incident.
Here is a quick recap:

UPDATE#2 : 1 shower was taken around 1 PM CST (Fri Oct 3, 2008)- the main burner turned on. After the water reached the target temp, the main burner turned off. The pilot stayed on.

UPDATE #3 (approx 5:15 PM CST Fri, Oct 3, 2008): took a shower. Main burner turned on. Water in the tank reheated. Main burner went off. Pilot still on. So far, no idea why it went off 3 times in the past 2 days.

UPDATE #4 (approx 11:30 PM CST Fri, Oct 3, 2008): got back out from dinner. Pilot light still on. Hopefully it stays on all night and we have plenty of hot water for showers in the morning. Stay vigilant people…tweet if the flame dies.

UPDATE #5 (approx 11:45 PM CST Fri, Oct 3, 2008): just about to go to bed when the main burner kicked in. It lasted about 8 minutes and then shut off. Pilot still on. Lets hope that happen a few times overnight and the hot water tank is maintained up to temp overnight and of course, the pilot stays on. With everyone watching on the live Mogulus video feed (about 70 people currently)…I am betting that we will have hot showers tomorrow.

UPDATE #6 (approx 9 AM CST Sat, Oct 4, 2008): The pilot light is still on thanks to the vigilance of the blue flame watchers. Now we can have hot showers.

UPDATE #7 (approx 12:30 PM Sun, Oct 5, 2008): The pilot was on all day yesterday and so far today without failure. The main burner comes on and off as needed without any adverse consequence.

UPDATE #8 (approx 10:30 AM Mon, Oct 65, 2008): No failures yesterday or overnight and so far today the pilot light is still going strong.

Many thanks to all who participated and offered suggestions.

I think the most logical at this point were:

dirty burner…clean or replace the thing.

condensation or leak dripping on the flame putting it out.

draft from the flue putting pilot flame out

random draft putting pilot flame out

poor gas pressure


All said however, I would like to catch the pilot light snuffing in the act.
Replacing the entire hot water tank is not really a viable option at this point. Aside from a cranky pilot light, there is no evidence that there is anything (else) wrong with the unit.

And FYI, looking at Lowes reveals that a 50 gal gas water heater cost about $700 and a tankless unit (that can supply 2 simultaneous appliances) is about $1300, not including installation cost.
Also, these units have a 12 yr warranty. So arguing that a 15 yr old unit needs to be replaced merely because of its age, doesn’t really make sense to me. If it is working and not unsafe, why does it need replacing (at least in its entirety…I can see replacing the burner unit)?

I will continue to stream the video until the pilot light goes out, or until the outgoing bandwidth of the stream to the Mogulus servers eats up too much bandwidth. I may however put the internal panel cover on and see if I can angle the camera to still view the pilot. It won’t be quite as good a view, but still should provide some info should the pilot light be extinguished.

-Kyle

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So this is not the thing that I usually blog about…but hey…I am grumpy since I didn’t get my hot shower this morning

The pilot light on my water heater keeps going out. I had a service man in to look at it. He replaced the thermocouple. It was fine for a few weeks after that. Now about 6 weeks later, the damn pilot keeps going out again every other day! I figured I would use technology to my advantage and broadcast a webcam view of my burner and watch it from the comfort of my office…
…and co-opt whoever cares to watch to alert me if they see the pilot light go out.

You can watch the live TV stream on my Mogulus channel:
http://www.mogulus.com/flexmonkeypatches

or go to the full post and view the channel on my site…

UPDATE: if anyone wants to chip in to help defray the cost of a new water heater or the repair bill should I call in a repairman again…you know what to do….paypall donation link at the right on the sidebar.

Read the rest of this post»

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