hassles of DIY gas hot water repairs

[bruce56]

a storm blew out pilot light on my water heater. It would not light again. I knew the cause was that there is a pinhole to set air-fuel ratio and it can become clogged. So unscrewed a few things to remove the pinhole and dipped it in metho. Put everything back, pressed the piezo igniter and hooray, flame appears. Unfortunately, I only got 90 seconds of hot water, then main flame goes out. So I had to call repairman from the company that sells my brand of heater. And the problem was that I had to unclamp the overheating sensor to remove the pilot light, and I put it back a few mm too high. So poor little sensor tells gas to shut off.

[Brian Gaff]

One seems to have shot oneself in the foot financially then. Brian

[spuorgelgoog]

Don't think of it as money paid to fix the heater, think of it as money paid to learn how to do the job properly yourself so you won't have that problem next time.

Owain

[Robin]

Next time when tackling a new job take digital photos before you start and as you go along. It's not a guarantee but when it comes to "I think it went there" a photo's better than most memories.

[ss]

+1

[tabbypurr]

I tried that with a film camera once, rather than tracing the (experimental ) circuit out. The resulting picture was hopeless, much of it too dark to s ee anything. By then I'd taken it apart, when I saw the photo I was certain ly not reassured. I worked out what bits needed to go where though & had it all working fine afterwards. Digicams are so much better, you can see inst antly what info you do & don't have in the picture.

NT

[dennis]

Shh! You will wake whiskey dave.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Did this when I was redoing a valley gutter between two roofs which were a different height. That wasn't the original reason I took the pictures, but it came in very handy when working out how the tiles went back on again.