Did you forget to turn off your stove burner
Yes, like back in the 70’s.
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Tried that. It condensed on the cold ceiling and rained all over the house.
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Actually I had the gas company knock on my door after an outage for repairs-- a lot of stoves still have pilot lights, so if the gas goes out so does the pilot light flame, and obviously they are aware of the danger here.
Yeah, this is the real problem with leaving the stove on-- you leave it on because you’re cooking something– even just a pot of water is dangerous because the pot probably has some kind of non-metal handle, which will start to burn and smoke once all the water has boiled off.
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A gas range burner? sure. But not everything is so well behaved. A friend of mine had his electric oven fail “on” at maximum heat (possibly damaged by a power surge during a thunderstorm) while he was away. It didn’t start a fire, but parts of it were melted and his cabinets and floor were scorched. My brother’s oven has done the same thing, luckily while he was home. It was sitting there off, and then just switched on full power and wouldn’t turn off, he had to cut it off at the breaker. The normal/correct way to handle this is to have a thermal fuse that cuts off the power if it overheats, but apparently that isn’t (or wasn’t) standard practice on electronically controlled ovens, or required for UL listing.
tl;dr: I am not that impressed with the UL.
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My stove here (France) has no such control on the burners, but when you light the oven you have to push in the knob, turn it to maximum, light the gas with a sparker or a lighter, and wait a few seconds until the burner gets hot and makes an audible “click,” or the gas will shut itself off.
On the subject of the post, I once had to begin a date by immediately dragging the person back to my place to shut off the pan of milk I’d stupidly left warming on the stove (even more stupidly, I’d done that with the dog in the house…)
Rocky start, but the date turned out OK 
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The old “I left the stove on at home” line, does that still work?
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I’m going to speak up for ETL on this one. UL pricing has gotten out of hand, ETL labs use the same standards as set by federal governments to ensure an equal level of safety by manufacturers. On smaller runs ETL is the only way for some manufacturers to keep pace given their lower costs and faster speed at testing.
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I assume that if such an outage occurs and they go door-to-door and come across a house where nobody answers, they probably just shut off that house’s gas at the exterior valve and leave a note on the door.
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[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:16, topic:94733, full:true”]
How about modern stoves that utilize a spark igniter in place of a pilot light?
[…]
ETA: here are the controls for my stove burners. From OFF, the dials only turn counter-clockwise, first to LITE and then from HI to LO. You have to hold it on LITE and wait for the solenoid to click a few times before the spark ignites the flame, then you continue twisting to your desired level:[/quote]
Actually, you just described the equivalent of lighting the pilot light and engaging the thermocouple (or similar) on it. That’s what the separate “LITE” position you have to hold it at is for. That “LITE” position (which it won’t be able to be left at) is the only position where you can get gas without flame. At any other position the thermocouple device will cut the gas automatically when the temperature drops due to not being inside the flames.
You can look up more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_supervision_device
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Yeah, I know how a thermocouple works, although I did forget the name (thanks for the reminder!). But unlike my previous house’s furnace and water heater, both of which had pilot lights, my stove burners possess neither pilot lights nor thermocouple… at least not one that prevents gas from escaping when the burner isn’t lit. My previous stove (also with igniter solenoids rather than pilot lights) at least had a safety detent thing; you had to press the knob in before you could twist past OFF to prevent you from accidentally bumping a knob slightly on without igniting it. My current stove doesn’t even have that. It works like my outdoor propane grill: twist past OFF and gas begins to flow, but only at LITE will the igniter fire.
Could very well be that violates safety standards and the stove simply has a broken thermocouple, but it really just acts like it never had one. There’s no detent or anything at the LITE position (unlike the ancient furnace and Reagan-era water heater at my old house) to make sure you pause there long enough to ensure ignition. You can blast right past LITE to HI if you really want to start gassing up the kitchen.
Also, you could leave it on LITE with ease, if the constant clicking of the igniter didn’t bother you. Those knobs don’t have the spring-loaded mechanism that the furnace and water heater do.
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[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:30, topic:94733, full:true”]
Could very well be that violates safety standards and the stove simply has a broken thermocouple, but it really just acts like it never had one. There’s no detent or anything at the LITE position (unlike the ancient furnace and Reagan-era water heater at my old house) to make sure you pause there long enough to ensure ignition. You can blast right past LITE to HI if you really want to start gassing up the kitchen.
Also, you could leave it on LITE with ease, if the constant clicking of the igniter didn’t bother you. Those knobs don’t have the spring-loaded mechanism that the furnace and water heater do.
[/quote]Wow, yeah, that sounds like it’s certainly violating a TON of safety standards. I’d say it sounds like something’s broken, but with how you describe it, it sounds more like it wasn’t made with any at all. If not, you’ve got a stove that has somehow had every single safety feature broken or intentionally disabled.
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Well, again, it’s my second consecutive gas range that works like this. Previous one was a General Electric from around 2005, current one might be somewhat older (different house), and I don’t remember the brand. Also a bit too lazy to wander downstairs at 3:23 AM and check. 
Anyway, I know the GE one didn’t have a thermocouple, because even with the safety detent in the knobs, once or twice somebody bumped into one and turned on a burner without ignition. Smell of natural gas was what got us to notice and turn it off.
Have gone out on more than one occasion for the whole weekend and left the stove on. Can confirm.
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Gas companies (at least in the US) are not allowed to turn the gas back on after a shutdown without physically entering the house to verify all standing pilots are lit.
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Sure. But if nobody’s home at my house when they want to restore service to the rest of the neighborhood, they’ll just shut off my house’s main valve and leave me a note to call them when I want my service restored.
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We would put the oven on so there wasn’t a open flame- open the fort every so often.
I don’t know. That’s probably safe to assume though-- the gas company knows how dangerous gas can be, and it seems like every year there’s a big gas explosion, for them precaution is good business. In my case I rent, so they would’ve just asked the landlord for entry.
But, there’s still no better way to cook. Electric ranges are pitiful. I’ll split up old shipping pallets and cook on a wood fire in the hobo jungle before I use an electric range.
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When I was a student my flatmate used to have a habit of coming home drunk, and trying to cook (hi Rich!). I’d regularly come into the kitchen in the morning and find the hob left on low, I think because if you turned the dial the wrong way, it would stay on very low.
Annoying until one morning when I walked in and noticed the smell of gas*, where he’d somehow left it on, with no flame. I’m not sure if that was better or worse than the times I’d find him passed out on the floor with his hand down his trousers…
(*) well, the smell of the chemicals they put in to make the gas smell
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@some_guy, @Donald_Petersen, @Sigmund…
Since roughly 1800 or so, all gas home appliances are equipped with a thermocouple composed of copper and iron welded together. The flame of the pilot (or in an igniter stove, the flame of the burner) plays over the thermocouple, and since the two metals have dissimilar rates of expansion, the one that expands less physically prevents the one that wants to expand more from moving. This intolerable situation is relieved by electron transfer - an electrical current is generated. That electrical current feeds a coil of copper wire, generating a magnetic field, which holds a spring-loaded iron pin in place. If the heat stops, the electricity stops, so the magnetic field collapses, so the spring drives the pin home, which shuts off all gas. It is an almost perfectly failsafe system; if any part of it breaks or wears out, it shuts off the gas.
When lighting such a device, one physically forces the pin back against its spring by pushing a button or pushing in the stove knob so that gas can flow. As soon as the pilot (or burner) is lit, the thermocouple is heated, and the pin is held by the magnetism.
There are a couple other refinements available but that’s basically it. When the gas company turns off the gas, the system safes itself immediately. 1940s stoves are no less safe than 2016 stoves and in some ways are safer.
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