This is not Pit-worthy, but I’m ticked off!
Friday morning, my shower was a little cooler than normal, no problem I just turned up the hot water and life was ok. Friday night, I get home and wanted to steam the wrinkles out of a shirt I was going to wear for my first date with a woman I really like. I hung a shirt on a hanger in the shower stall and turned the temperature to full hot, and after about a minute there was still no steam coming out.
Hmmm. I need to leave for my date in about 45 minutes.
I go downstairs to see if the pilot light is lit on the hot water heater. I don’t see anything, so I attempt to light it. No luck. There is a little sight window to look through, I guess they don’t want any air to come into the combustion chamber except through the hole on the bottom of the tank. I shine my flashlight in there to see if I can see where the pilot light is, but the glare off the window keeps me from seeing too far in. (it turns out I was looking in the wrong place). In fact to see the pilot light you have to be laying on the ground, and not directly in front of the sight window, but slightly towards the middle of the tank. This is the least of my problems with the engineering of this hot water heater.
I checked my furnace, and the pilot light is out on that as well. So, I called the gas company. The lady at the gas company tells me that there is low pressure in the line, and they will send a guy right out.
I have to leave for my date in about 15 minutes.
I asked the lady if they can just send someone in the morning. She says, “No, we consider this an emergency, you shouldn’t operate any electrical appliances, start any vehicles (and so on).” I told her I won’t be around for the guy to come in, and she says that if no one is available, the tech will just shut off my gas. I called Dad to come house-sit while I leave for my date. I know you’re thinking, that’s not nice to put your dad in a position where he may blow up, but realistically I didn’t smell any gas, and I had been flipping light switches and using electrical appliances ever since I got home – I was mostly sure there was no danger.
I left for my date and things were fine. Dad calls and says the tech was able to light the furnace, but not the hot water heater. There was no problem in the gas lines, so it must be a problem with the hot water heater. Anybody who has owned a home will tell you if the pilot light will light but not stay lit, it is probably the thermocouple.
Saturday morning I call my dad and ask him to help walk me through replacing the thermocouple. When I went to remove the thermocouple, I put my wrench on the fitting and turn it, but it is not getting loose. I think in my head lefty loosey, and try again. It is not loosening. I try the other direction and it loosens. Hmmm, did I have my right and left mixed up 
(it can happen)? Nope, the gas supply attachment loosened when I turned it left, and so did the pilot light attachment.
I go to Lowe’s to get a replacement thermocouple. In the aisle there are two options for thermocouples, one generic type costs about $4, and one that fits Whirlpool hot water heaters and it costs $16 (and it has a tag near the fitting telling me it has left-handed threads)! Grrr.
I re-assemble the whole mess, and the stupid pilot light still won’t stay lit! I tried it a bunch of times. Still no good. My hot water heater is only 3 years old! I call Whirlpool because this HAS to be a problem outside of just a thermocouple. I tell my story the the CSR on the phone and she says you might’ve tightened the thermocouple too much, she tells me to use a mirror and a flashlight and to look into where the thermocouple is attached, and look for a braided wire across the top of the hole – it’s not there. She says, yup you tightened it too much, we’ll send you a new gas valve. It’ll be overnighted on Monday and you should have it Tuesday.
I’m without hot water until Tuesday :mad:
Regarding “design for service” or “foolproofing” you should design something so that it cannot be “tightened too much.” The Whirlpool engineers took this and made it so that normal loosening (lefty loosey) in fact does what you do not want, it tightnes and thereby breaks a delicate piece needed to operate correctly. Why did they use Left Handed threads? My assumption is that they are trying to make their thermocouple proprietary so that you cannot use the generic $4 thermocouple that is used EVERYWHERE else (they must be taking lessons from Sony).
Am I being bitchy because I made a mistake? Or am I justified in blaming this whole mess on a BAD design?
That being said, the whole left-handed thread thing is a bugaboo whenever it pops up. I haven’t had any experience with it, but in the Sixties some genius at Chrysler decided to make the lug nuts on the left side of the car left handed. Some sources claim that they were marked with the appropriate direction but that didn’t prevent plenty of people from ripping off the studs trying to loosen the nuts. I have had experience with certain British automobiles that used left-handed threading in an apparently random fashion on various components of the powertrain, and unless you read the Chilton’s carefully (and sometimes not even then) you were likely to spend twenty minutes alternating between left and right to get the piece free. (I also love how the same part number–one made to “English” specs and the other made to SI–would have different threading. This was particularly a problem with Lucas components produced in different Commonwealth nations at different times.)