how much do you even care about backup power for an outage so short that you could feasibly ride it out on batteries?
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Appliances with pilot lights have thermopile safety valves to prevent that.
Maybe some of them? I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
If you look on gas company websites, they all say that they will need to send technicians door to door before they’re willing to turn the gas back on, and that is what happened here for people who turned their own gas off out of caution around the Lawrence explosions.
My impression is that gas companies use a procedure like this out of an abundance of caution / because there are still very old gas appliances that could be around which could have this issue. But I don’t think it would be legal to sell them now, or has been for a long time.
EDIT: Apparently I am wrong about this, heaters require them but stoves (in the United States) do not. :-( This according to some undated forum posts, plus Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_supervision_device—“SD usage in consumer products differs among political units – in the U.S., FSDs are not required by law or regulation for gas range (or gas stove) top burners and consequently are not present on ranges in the U.S. [citation needed]”.
But I get the impression that modern gas stoves are always pilotless, in which case only the cooking flame would be an issue, which would hopefully always be supervised.
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Sorry, I thought you’d said that the solar batteries were your solution.
We have a little dual-fuel generator that can run for quite a while on a barbecue tank (there’s usually a full spare around here), and for longer than that on gasoline that could usually be siphoned from the car. It’s not hardwired, and it won’t heat the house, but it and a couple of long extension cords can keep the freezer from thawing out or the pet snakes from dying of the cold.
I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
Hmm. I guess it might not be universal for stoves, since they’re small burners that are always supposed to be used under direct supervision? It’s true that an N-burner stove would have to have N thermopiles, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever used a stove with pilot lights, which may explain my not having seen anything without the thermopile. The pilot-light appliances I’ve used have been house heaters and water heaters; things with big burners that start by themselves.
I absolutely do believe that they send people around, regardless. I mean, even if you have safety devices, things can happen. And I do think that even a stove could probably be dangerous, if say you were heating water for pasta when the gas went out and forgot to shut off the burner...
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Maybe some of them? I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
If you look on gas company websites, they all say that they will need to send technicians door to door before they’re willing to turn the gas back on, and that is what happened here for people who turned their own gas off out of caution around the Lawrence explosions.
Ex: https://www.centerpointenergy.com/en-us/safety/pages/understanding-the-gas-outage-restoration-process-.aspx https://myenergycoop.com/restoring-natural-gas-outages/
My impression is that gas companies use a procedure like this out of an abundance of caution / because there are still very old gas appliances that could be around which could have this issue. But I don’t think it would be legal to sell them now, or has been for a long time.
EDIT: Apparently I am wrong about this, heaters require them but stoves (in the United States) do not. :-( This according to some undated forum posts, plus Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_supervision_device—“SD usage in consumer products differs among political units – in the U.S., FSDs are not required by law or regulation for gas range (or gas stove) top burners and consequently are not present on ranges in the U.S. [citation needed]”.
But I get the impression that modern gas stoves are always pilotless, in which case only the cooking flame would be an issue, which would hopefully always be supervised.
Sorry, I thought you’d said that the solar batteries were your solution.
We have a little dual-fuel generator that can run for quite a while on a barbecue tank (there’s usually a full spare around here), and for longer than that on gasoline that could usually be siphoned from the car. It’s not hardwired, and it won’t heat the house, but it and a couple of long extension cords can keep the freezer from thawing out or the pet snakes from dying of the cold.
Hmm. I guess it might not be universal for stoves, since they’re small burners that are always supposed to be used under direct supervision? It’s true that an N-burner stove would have to have N thermopiles, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever used a stove with pilot lights, which may explain my not having seen anything without the thermopile. The pilot-light appliances I’ve used have been house heaters and water heaters; things with big burners that start by themselves.
I absolutely do believe that they send people around, regardless. I mean, even if you have safety devices, things can happen. And I do think that even a stove could probably be dangerous, if say you were heating water for pasta when the gas went out and forgot to shut off the burner...
Yup: solar, which works for a prolonged blackout (unless the panels are covered by snow or it’s fully cloudy).
And then a small amount of batteries (~1kwh) for times when we need some power and there’s no sun.