Water heater pilot light goes out when burners go out

[Dean Hoffman]

Why not just drain the whole system? A power outage won't bother your plumbing system. There's another snow/ice storm going through the eastern U.S again.

Some cut.

[trader_4]

That's the safest thing to do. I wouldn't worry about a water heater in a below ground basement freezing in MD. But pipes in the rest of the place sure could if the heat goes out and that's worse. Shutting the water off would prevent flooding, but not busted pipes. Drain the system and you're

100% safe. Risk isn't that great though, he's leaving in a week, that leaves about three weeks or so of risk.

[micky]

YOu folks on the homeowners webpage should be aware that people reading Usenet *on* Usenet never see the original question anyhow. The webpage you use has the habit of not sending posts here until you are in the middle of a discussion. I have no idea why they wait. So IMVSO you interrupt us far more than I have or all of us on Usenet put together have interrupted you.

The thread was at least partly about the pilot light going out and you said it's easy to relight. But if it goes out when you're out of town, it's below freezing weather, and there is no one home to relight the pilot, the question is whether the WH can freeze and break. Don't you care about that?

And not every water heater is in the basement. Some are, for example, in the garage, ground level with only one garage door, with leaks, between it and the cold weather.

[micky]

I've considered that, but it's a nuisance to drain and takes more time than I have. The only choices are leaving the power on or turning it off.

I don't like the idea of turning down the temp, because the dial is so imprecise, I won't get it back to where it was. Plus there are two thermostats, each behind a screw-on panel, and one setting is sort of dependant on the other.

I don't want to waste the world's electricity or waste money to pay for it. One page says $1.20 a day when used for 3 hours. Others $2 or

1.56. What about when no water is used. Another page said iirc 22c a day when the water is not used.

All the rest of the pipes will be drained, as I do every winter trip.

I never drain the WH but I can't remember if I've turned off the power. No, one year I turned off the power because I remember I did it a day or two in advance, curious how long the water would stay hot.

I turn off the main water valve, open the hot and cold laundry sink faucets, go upstairs and open the sink faucets. (this time I'll do the shower/bath too), close all but the basement faucets after allowing 10 minutes for them to drain, so I don't have them on when I turn the water back on later. put RV antifreeze in the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry sink drain, shower, bath, and toilets. 1 gallon does all of these imo, 10 drains.

As long as the basement faucets are open, I think the pipes would drain even if I didn't open the faucets on the first and second floor, Is that right???

IIUC, there isn't enough surface tension or anything to stop them. (Is it still called surface tensio when it's the undersurface?

[Idlehands]

Ummm I am not on homeowners, you should learn how to read headers before making your little lectures and I was offer genuine help to the OP, what were you offering.

Learn to read, I was saying the thermal shut of, if automatic restores the gas valve when it cools down allowing relighting of the pilot. Other thermal cutoffs require a manual reset.

If you go out of town and remove all heat in your residence that's your problem and why wouldn't you drain the hot water tank before leaving?

Which has nothing to do with what I saw as the original question, are you sure you aren't a homemoaner?

[Clare Snyder]

They might drain - mostly - eventually. Opening top and bottom "fast drains" and the inertia of fast draining water "pulls" water from low spots

[trader_4]

Why? If you have a sump pump, garden hose to it. I don't, I ran the hose to the french perimeter drain, left it on a slow flow until empty when I had to replace the WH.

Turn it off.

It's in a underground basement in MD. The tank is insulated. Even if it was the coldest part of winter, it's not going to freeze, unless you have openings there with wind blowing through it. Even then, it would take a long time for a WH to freeze solid where damage would result. The temp isn't going to stay that low for that long. We're two weeks past the coldest part of winter now.

Bingo. That's all you need to do.

I would not count on it, no.

[Marilyn Manson]

Maybe, maybe not. How hard is it to test? Open the lower faucets only, wait until the water stops draining. Open the upstairs faucet. See if any more water come out. Write down the result so you won't have to remember the results next year. You'll just have to remember where you put the info that you wrote down. Send yourself an email or save it to a text doc on your computer.

However, the issue isn't just draining them. It's refilling them properly to let the air fill any air chambers might you have and then get all of the excess air out so that you don't experience water hammer.

Both draining and re-filling, plus other tips, is covered here:

[trader_4]

How hard is it to just open all the faucets when you're doing the drain? I think Clare identified one issue, with air freely entering you get momentum going that helps suck water out of any low spots that might be there. If it was me, I'd shut off the main valve, open all the faucets, flush the toilets, then open the lowest available drain.

[Marilyn Manson]

Low spots shouldn't be an issue anyway. In many cases, pipes don't burst at the freeze point, they burst at a weak point due to the build up of pressure caused by the freezing. Could be a fixture, a less than perfect solder/glue joint, etc. If the pipes are mostly empty and the low spot freezes, odds are there won't be enough pressure built up to cause a burst. Not a certainty, but a pretty good chance the pipes will be fine.

[micky]

You're right. The original poster was.

This is not a college thesis and I don't put as much effort into verifying everything. And I didn't give my lecture until you gave your unnecessary objection to my first post. If the OP had objected to my partially changing the subject that would have been one thing, but I don't see you as the "appointed keeper of the thread".

The first part was genuine help. Maybe you got so annoyed at something you didn't notice what the post said. After that, I asked a related question.

Regardess whether the reset is automatic or manual, you are saying relighting is allowed, NOT automatic. So everything I said applies. And that part was directly related to what you said.

Because it's a nuisance, I have to watch to make sure it's not flooding the floor, that takes a lot of time, it's a waste of water, and what I do is turn off the power a day or two in advance and the water is hot or warm until I leave, so I'm still not wasting electricity.

You really are a nitpicker. Get a life.

[micky]

Early on the floor got wet from some sort of leak, and didn't dry out for a week, which was unusual. Usually a spilled cup of water would soak into the cement or evaporate within a day -- I don't know which was happening.

But this time, it stayed wet for a week. Finally I realized the WH was leaking -- and it had to be replaced. I put the r eplacement in a plastic pan made for WHs and connected the 1.5 or 2" output of the pan through plastic pipe to the sump. So the plan was if it leaked or I had to drain it, for it to run into the sump. I'd have to open it enough to drain in a day and yet not overflow. I'd be without hot water the last day.

I like your answer.

That's just what I thought. But then I start to wonder. I've never left this early before. I'll go with what you've said.

Great.

You agree with Clare. Roger, wilco.

[micky]

Aha. Well that's important. I'll continue my practice of opening the faucets.

[micky]

Thermometer is too much trouble.

This is a good idea, but there are still two of them behind panels that are screwed on. One I have to kneel on the floor and iirc bend over, and now I think there is wood piled in front of it. Things that used to be easy seem harder these days.

So you agree with me on that part, except our proposed remedies are different, yours to turn it down to the lowest and mine to turn it off.

[Clare Snyder]

Don't futz around with thermostat settings on electric heaters.The "staging" of the 2 elements is rather critical for proper, efficient opperation of the electric heater

[micky]

Very interesting. Thanks.

[trader_4]

Why would it take a day to drain 40 gallons through a garden hose to a sump pump? Any decent sump pump can handle the water at gallons per minute, the limiting factor isn't the sump pump over flowing, it's the gravity driven capacity of the hose. I'm not saying you should drain it, just that if you wanted to, it shouldn't take more than a couple hours, if that and it doesn't have to be monitored once it's started.

[Ralph Mowery]

Hours is way too much. I drained all the water out of the lines and water tank in less than half an hour when the tank needed replacing a few years ago. Opened the sink valves on the 2nd floor and used a long garden hose to get the water where I wanted it. There was a small amount of water in the heater due to it being below ground level. The plumbers hooked a samll pump to the line and pumped out the rest. Took longer to hook up the pump than to get rid of the last few gallons.

[micky]

I wouldn't use a hose. That would be an added chore. I'd just open the valve let it flow into the pan and through the pipe to the sump. The pipe might be clogged with insect nests by now, and if I open it too much, the pan will overflow.