Things Sometimes Work Out

I got into the shower Sunday morning, turned on the tap, and adjusted the faucet to where I normally do.  Except this time the water coming out of the shower was cold.  I turned in more hot water, and discovered that the hottest it would get was barely warm enough so I wasn’t uncomfortable in the shower.

Knowing as I showered that the water heater was on the fritz, I thought about possible problems and how I might be able to solve them.  I was hoping the pilot had gone out due to some kind of atmospheric phenomenon, but I also knew that in the years we have lived here, and with all of the windy, stormy, gusty days we’ve had, the light had never blown out on its own.  My gut told me something on the heater was faulty.

After my shower, I went downstairs and lit the pilot.  It stayed lit and I turned on the burner.  Hoping against hope that the pilot going out was just a weird coincidence of some kind, we went on about our business.  Of course, it went out before long, and we spent the rest of the day without hot water, except when I’d go down and light it.  Then it would run long enough to heat the water already in the tank, but would go out after that.

I do this s few times, and reality sets in.  I need to fix the heater, or I need to get a new one.  I can’t go on lighting the thing four or five times a day and waiting for it to heat the water.  Not one to spend money when I don’t need to do so, I was hopeful the only problem would be a thermocouple that was bad.  A thermocouple is a safety device that shuts off the gas should the pilot light go out.  That prevents unlit gas from building up and causing an explosion.  If it goes bad, however, it shuts off the gas when there’s nothing wrong.  That’s what I was hoping.

Monday, I stay home and remove the burner and pilot assembly.  There’s nothing one can tell just by looking whether or not the thermocouple was bad.  I discovered, however, that it was one of the newfangled thermocouples that had an extra piece of electronics hanging on it.  Never having seen this before, I went on the Internet and found out that what I was seeing was a fusible link, an additional safety device.  And of course there was no way the newfangled thermocouple could be replaced with a regular one.

I checked three different places to try finding one of the newfangled devices.  Having no luck, I remembered a place I used to go to when I worked for the nursing home.  They seemed to have things no one else had, and would sell to the general public.  I went there, took in my assembly, and the woman behind the parts counter immediately went to a shelf and pulled a box.  She opened it and there was an exact replacement of the entire pilot assembly, including newfangled thermocouple.

Sixty dollars and about 45 minutes later, the heater was back together heating water.  And it’s been running ever since.  I seemed to have gotten lucky this time, and was able to save a service call and about two hundred dollars in labor.  And we have hot water again.  I know it won’t always happen this way, but sometimes things work out, and I’m glad they did this time.