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From: jhillis@ihuxx.UUCP (Jeffrey Hillis)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: pilot light out?
Message-ID: <893@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 14:52:41 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.893
Posted: Fri Mar  8 14:52:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 10:04:52 EST
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> > My heater hasn't been working all week. I finally looked at it
> > and discovered the pilot light was out. Lighting it restored
> > normal function.
> > 
> > 1) How could this happen? Would a power failure have anything to
> > do with it?
> 
> It's possible that a power failure did it, but I don't think so.  All
> of the gas-fired heaters I know of use electricity only to control
> the main valve (via the thermostat) and to run fans.  Maybe a gas
> outage?  That's *very* unlikely, since the gas companies are quite
> careful not to restart flow when valves might be open.
> 
I have, on occasion, had my gas furnace pilot go out.  This seems
to have happened only on unusually windy days (in chicago, an
unusually windy day means hurricane force winds :-)).  Perhaps
you just got a blast of wind down the vent pipe.  If this happened
often, you could put a cap on top of the vent pipe.  Note that
by cap, I *don't* mean close the pipe off, instead just a dunce
cap shaped cover which sits above the top of the pipe.  You
could probably buy such an item at a home repair/supply store.