Hello, and Merry Christmas! I hope all you readers had a warm and happy holiday! This issue is a bit late because of the holiday madness eating up work time. No, I'm not complaining!
Am I going to talk about Y2K? Is there anything that hasn't been said? My personal prediction is that infrastructure systems in this country are probably fairly secure, and any interruptions will be short. We may get a long-term economic impact from this as other countries suffer more severe problems, but in the even longer-term, that will be offset. I see the Y2K bug as a mechanism for the forced upgrading of aging computer systems all over the world, and that can only help things. Anyway, enough editorializing, on to this months house exploration.
Household emergencies, Chapter 3.
A couple of months back, I talked about what to do for electrical and plumbing emergencies. There is one more item you need to know about in advance: How to turn off the gas, either for an individual appliance or for the whole house. Let's say that the water heater is smoking, or you need to remove an appliance for replacement.
One quick precaution first: If you smell gas, call your gas supplier immediately. If you smell it really strongly, call from a neighbor's house!
The main gas line, and each branch of gas pipe in the house should have a valve. This means one main, one for the furnace, one for the water heater, one for the dryer, etc. For the appliance branches, the rule is that the valve should be in the same room as the appliance. This is so they are easy to find in the event of a problem. The main may be outdoors below the meter, or on the main pipe near the point where it enters the house.
Gas valves are different from water valves in that they don't get turned around and around to shut them off. For a gas valve, when the handle is parallel to the pipe, it's on, when it's perpendicular to the pipe, it's off. Once again, it all sounds so simple. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I'm glad you asked...
First, valves get lost. In basements, especially, people build walls, suspend ceilings, add rooms, and don't pay any attention to the utility equipment they are covering up. So, the gas valve for your dryer is now 2 rooms away, above a ceiling panel, and totally invisible. If you are a regular reader of this letter, you know what I'm going to say next! The time to find that valve is now, when nothing is leaking, smoking or burning. You may have to move a number of ceiling panels to follow the pipe back up from the dryer to it's point of origin. Label the valve if you can, to make the next find easier.
The second problem is the same one we ran into with the water shut-offs under sinks: A valve that doesn't get used for years gets stiff, and may be too hard to turn by hand. The natural consequence of that is someone will put a pair of pliers on it, and break off the handle. Either way, if it won't move, it needs fixing, and this is a plumber's job. In some cases, loosening the valve may be a matter of adjustment or lubrication, but you need to replace the valve if it's broken or too hard to move. Remember, a gas valve should be just barely loose enough to move by hand. If it's too easy to move, it will probably leak.
Quick precaution! A lot of gas-burning appliances have pilot flames that run constantly, to provide an ignition source for the main burner. If you turn off the valve, the pilot will go out, and you will need to relight it. Most appliances have relighting instructions printed on them somewhere. If there are no instructions, or if you don't want to mess with this, then don't turn the valve all the way off for testing purposes.
This is a good time to go through your house and find all this stuff, and figure out how it works. The more you know in advance, the more calm and effective you will be when something goes "BOING!" in the night.
The Monthly Nag: have you been remembering to check smoke alarms every month, and change furnace filters every 2 months? Good!