Gas Leak under Cranefly Abode

[cranefly]

It's a nippy 53 degrees here.  Indoors.  Been that way a while, will continue until new gas lines installed.
Yes, we overstayed our welcome in this old house, shoulda bailed last year while the bailing was good.

The plumber spent the morning investigating and estimating.  Of course this is a slab, and the leak's in the concrete.  The cheapest fix is to go up to the roof, across and down to the stove, the wall heater, and the water heater.  And by cheap I mean pushing 8K.  And that's leaving the drywall repair to me.  Unfortunate development, considering we probably won't stay here much longer, and this is a scraper.  Whoever buys it will almost certainly rebuild.

Still, I guess it's good that we didn't launch ourselves into space with the gas leak.

[Drunk Monk]

Ouch.  Sorry to hear.

[cranefly]

We've been shut in the bedroom with Halvah and minimalist space heater all day.
They (four or five) are in the kitchen, living room, outside, and on the roof.
Cutting, drilling, grinding.
But I think they're almost done.
I'll soon be buying drywall and reacquainting myself with patching techniques.
Hopefully with some heat.

[Greg]

Have we all entered the contractor zone? Money keeps going in but nothing seems to be happening....

[Drunk Monk]

WTH?  You're right.  DOOM needs contractors.  If only there was a wood butcher among us.  And not one that just built sets for show.  Like a real one.

[cranefly]

We've been without hot water for 2 days.

No gas leak.  Yet.  But this is a gas water heater, and I had to put this somewhere.

I don't feel comfortable messing with gas lines, so I was ready to call a contractor.  LCF actually did, but whoever she talked to seemed to be saying they couldn't get the parts.  (Our water heater is only maybe 5 years old!)  The thermocouple is suspect, but you have to buy the whole ignition system.

So to hell with it.  I did some testing, and yes, the thermocouple should be between 650 to 750 millivolts.  Below 400 is bad.  Ours gives us 570, just to make things iffy.

Anyway, I'm about to do disassembly and see it I can identify the thermocouple itself, get a replacement.  Or if not, find some emery paper and try cleaning it. But this all means messing with the gas lines.

Labpadre just contacted me.  Not certain how they found out what I'm up to.  My damned google searches. no doubt.  Anyway, they're thinking of expanding coverage from just Starship leaks, ruptures and explosions to more domestic scenarios, so they want to set up a camera (24/7 live) in our breezeway.  We're still negotiating.

[Drunk Monk]

As you know, I recently retired from DYI plumbing. I never messed with gas. That just seems too explosive or noxious. 

Best of luck.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I’m not liking the ominous silence from the Cranefly Compound...

[cranefly]

Fuck.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Liking that one slightly less.

[Drunk Monk]

fuck is better than kaboom.  

update us, cf. 

this better not be another dangling puerto tale...

[cranefly]

It's just annoying.  To buy a gas water heater from Lowes maybe five years ago, install it with the help of LCF's brother in law, and that's great.  But now when a part fails (likely the thermocouple), there's no clear documentation on the parts.  LCF and I went to Lowes and got a tune-up kit that supposedly works for a Whirpool 40 gal 40,000 BTU tall gas water heater, which is what ours is, but there's diffferences.  I'm trying to see if I can mix and match, using part of the new, part of the old.  But I don't think so.

Prior to this, I disassembled ours and used 400 grit sandpaper on the old thermocouple, which was looking quite blackened/oxydized, got it all smooth and shiny, then spent hours putting everything back together (getting the gas lines aligned for proper threading was the toughest).  Retested the thermocouple, and the cleaning improved the multimeter reading from 570 mV to  630 mV, tantalizingly close to the 650-850 normal range.  But the pilot still won't stay lit.  And now an indicator light no longer will give a blink code.  So I gained in one area, lost in another.

Still no hot water, and we have a Zoom novel workshop tomorrow I need to prepare for, so I'm having to put this project on a back burner.

Yeah, that's a fucking pun.

And yeah, there's worse problems to have.  Still, it's annoying.

Lowes, by the way, was packed.  Parking lot, lines going in, lines for pick-ups (us) and returns (future us?), with booming outdoor PA announcements to social distance and wear masks.  It was a somewhat controlled chaos.  They're trying.

[cranefly]

Fucky McFuckface.

More later...

[Drunk Monk]

[cranefly]

So many DIY repair videos on youtube for gas water heater ailments.  Yet not a single one looks anything like our setup.  I mean, they say, try resetting the thermo switch.  What thermo switch?

So I stayed up late last night looking at photos, lots of photos, and suddenly, Hey, that's like ours!  It was posted by some guy in Indiana making fun of this ridiculous ultra-low NOx system.  "Must be a California thing," he chuckled.

That gave me enough to go on, and yes, it's a problematic system, apparently abandoned, or much upgraded since.  There was a recall on them in 2008 because of a fire hazard.  We bought our unit from Lowes in 2012.  That's not a typo.  There's lots of complaints about the continued selling of these units well after the recall.  And calls to repair shops would just say, "The parts aren't available."  So I had LCF call the number on the unit (she's better on the phone than me), and after giving them all the info, we have an upgraded manifold door unit headed our way.  Oh, and they're throwing in a new Honeywell natural gas valve control as well.  Also, phone numbers of local repairmen and a labor authorization code.

So, still no hot water.  But by Wednesday the part should come, and hopefully a repairman will call us back and take the money.