My gas water heater won't light and before I start tearing into it, wanted to get some tips. Here's the info. It's a Reliance, about 5-6 years old. The pilot is out and the pilot will not remain lit when I relight it. Tried twice and gave it several minutes for the pilot flame to get hot.
The obvious thing that seems kaput would be the gizmo with the tube that gets heated by the pilot light, allowing the gas valve to open. Is there any sure way to tell that this is in fact the problem? Any tips on how to replace this? It looks like the pilot light assembly comes out, then you just replace the gizmo.
But one more issue. When this happened, I was away for a few days. I shut the cold water off to the house. Normally, I would open a faucet to give the system some expansion room. This time, I didn't. I see on the gas control valve for the water heater it says there is a non-replacebable high temperature fuse there to protect from over temp. It certainly didn;t overheat, but is it possible the pressure got too high and maybe that somehow blew the fuse? I would think this wouldn't be possible, but it is very strange that whatever went kaput, just happened at the same time the water was shut off.