I know the igniter is supposed to fulfill the function of both pilot light and thermocouple. I also know that it doesn’t work so well as a thermocouple, since both my old stove and my current one will leak gas like crazy if the igniter doesn’t ignite. Probably not nearly as much as a propane grill, but still. Never had the issue with pilot-equipped stoves, obviously. But I never tease my slightly OCD wife for checking the stove knobs several times a day.
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If an indoor stove lets gas escape while it is not lit, and nobody is actively holding the control with their hand, it is broken, unsafe, illegal to operate, and horribly badly designed. If I was in your area I would come over and fix it for you so I could ogle your collection of memorabilia, of course!
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My wife once set the microwave to 10 minutes instead of 1 minute while disinfecting a sponge. By the time we caught on, it looked like the demonic briquette of evil from Time Bandits:
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One night my wife put some baby bottles in a pot of water to boil them, but forgot she had done so and went to bed. I was already asleep at that point, but I woke up needing to visit the restroom.
It’s a good thing I did. As I walked toward the bathroom I smelled something awful and went into the kitchen to see what it was. The water had all evaporated, the bottles had completely melted, then they had caught fire. It was basically a pan full of burning plastic.
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Oh, it wouldn’t be hard to fix, if the igniters are actually meant to operate as thermocouples; they’re right there on top. I replaced them on the old stove once, when they stopped igniting. That solved the ignition issue beautifully, but didn’t do anything about the gas leak issue. Seriously, it acted like a propane grill: if the knob’s on, gas comes out, whether lit or not. I always figured it was designed that way, since the stove (both of them, actually) otherwise acted perfectly normally and predictably. You just had to make sure you turned it off. Unlike the pilot light in a furnace, water heater, or oven, the stove burner being on but unlit is relatively obvious to the naked eye.
Anyway, neither stove required you to hold down the knob to ignite (though the GE did require you to push the knob inward to turn it past OFF). It could very well be that the stove’s were designed to allow gas to come out under just two conditions: either when the flame is lit and the knob is past LITE, or when the knob is actually on LITE and the igniter is firing. It’s worth noting, however, that on a stove with a dead or clogged or otherwise faulty igniter, the gas still comes out at full volume when the knob’s on LITE, and I repeat that neither of these stoves had momentary deadman switches at LITE.
Shrug. Maybe the early 2000s were excessively devil-may-care.
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Or leave a burner on super low and a gust of wind blows it out…wheeee!
Why a $1,000 stove doesn’t have gust proof burners you can find on a $50 backpacking stoves and $20 cigarette lighters defeats my comprehension.
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[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:45, topic:94733”]
It could very well be that the stoves were designed to allow gas to come out under just two conditions: either when the flame is lit and the knob is past LITE, or when the knob is actually on LITE and the igniter is firing.[/quote]
That’s what the law requires. The flame detector (preferably/typically a thermocouple) is only permitted to be defeated while the stove is being lighted.
[quote]It’s worth noting, however, that on a stove with a dead or clogged or otherwise faulty igniter, the gas still comes out at full volume when the knob’s on LITE, and I repeat that neither of these stoves had momentary deadman switches at LITE
Shrug. Maybe the early 2000s were excessively devil-may-care.[/quote]
Well, essentially that is the problem.
The system I described, which is still the most common, is relatively expensive compared to cut-rate Chinese semiconductors. And it takes some amount of time (typically four or five seconds, I’d guesstimate) for the thermocouple to heat up, and pilot lights waste gas. Technology to the rescue! Since the regulatory agencies are all captured now, it’s just a matter of a few words in the proper shell-like ears, and we can have a cheap circuit that detects flame, not a thermocouple (never mind if it fails the wrong way, unlike the thermocouple) and we can just run the gas a minute or so while waiting for that to register the heat, or just assume that the igniters and heat detectors never fail (because TECHNOLOGY is MAGIC!) and go from there.
But, seriously, if your stove does not stop producing gas in under a minute when it’s blown out, it’s broken, and also badly designed. It literally can’t happen in a well designed stove, like they made in 1902…
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Then why the hell did the gas company knock on my door to check my pilot?!!
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We were out of power for a week when Sandy hit. I found that boiling big pots of water on the stove top heated faster than flames alone.
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I’ve done this too in dire times. I think the humidity gives the illusion of it being warmer than it really is. Either way it works.
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My wide experience of stoves in France (2!) Tells me that the burners here are not (or not always) so equipped, though the ovens seem to be.
Also, here the gas meter (with its shut off valve) is often inside the residence (with no evident exterior way to shut it off).
You often see marked emergency gas work vehicles around town, but I have no idea how they deal with the customer-not-home problem…
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I just checked our current stove. Yep, it’s another GE, and sure enough, if you turn the knob past LITE without giving the igniter a chance to ignite, you’ll end up with a room full of gas. These knobs also have the press-to-turn-past-OFF feature, like our previous one.
I’m not too terribly worried about it, since we’ve lived with these menaces for 11 years now in total, and we haven’t blown up yet. If you read about me in the news, however, let it be a lesson to you: GE gas ranges are deadly. 
It does make we want to hunt down a user manual, or otherwise find out for sure if these stoves really did come with whatever analogue for thermocouples is supposed to accompany an igniter-equipped stove. Because neither stove has ever given me any indication that they ever behaved differently than they do now.
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She is not alone in this. Always’s fun to ruin multiple things at once!
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There are almost certainly shutoff valves for gas and water under the street. They might serve more than one house.
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I once left my electric cooker on when I was ill. 12 hours later I walked past the kitchen, felt the heat coming out the room and looked in to see the hob glowing red.
I worded that poorly. In multi-unit buildings, the meters and accompanying shutoff valves are inside the individual apartments. Obviously there’s also a shutoff for the building somewhere, but that wouldn’t deal with the make-sure-nobody’s-gas-is-still-on-after-the-gas-has-been-off-in-the-building problem.
However after reading this thread, I noticed that there’s a fitting in the wall outside each apartment marked with the gas company’s name, and evidently designed to be turned with something about the size of a spark plug wrench.
I think I’ve found the elusive external shutoff valve.
Then come on by because my 1930s sears & robuck stove is happy to spew gas in absence of any flame.
The beast in question. Oven on the right, storage for pots and pans on the left.
With the cooktop open, they provide you cook times and temps for all sorts of handy things, like timbales and “fish”
Once I got past my apprehension at lighting the oven with a match, I discovered that it’s the best stove I’ve ever cooked on. I have the gas guy inspect and adjust it once per year and they’re always tickled to see the old gal still being loved and used.
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Wow. Now that is one slick appliance. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything that old be that straight and clean after so many years of daily use.
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Believe it or not, I once had success with “I just moved house; wanna come over and help me put my bed back together?”.
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They… came over?
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