My ex-wife still, unfortunately, counts on me for many of the mundane day to day life kinds of questions. I’m generally a very handy guy with household stuff and cars, etc, so I get a lot of “hey, this happened what should I do?” kind of calls.
She lives in a really quaint part of town in an older apartment. She shares this apartment with Lucy, the 10 year old cockapoo, who was OUR dog before the split. This smallish (700 sq ft or so) apartment has an older gas stove.
The stove seems to be lacking a device to turn off the gas flow when the pilot goes out. I thought most modern gas appliances had this feature built in? If a pilot light goes out on her stove the gas continues to flow. If you are there, you don’t notice it so much because it gradually builds up, but if you walk in when the pilots are out, you can immediately smell gas. This happens all the time. It seems like at least once a week she comes home from work to discover the smell, and has to relight the pilots.
It seems that a landlord would be required to have a stove with that safeguard built in.
The ex-wife doesn’t want to rock the boat with the landlord since they have been difficult to deal with in the past.
Am I right to be concerned for anyone staying in that apartment? Am I right to be concerned about the effects on a small dog who is getting up there in years?
I was a landlord and had units with stoves in them old enough to be retro, even they had the mechanism you speak of. It may simply be malfunctioning, hire a serviceman for your piece of mind, have it checked, get the facts.
I lived in a place with a gas stove where I could ALWAYS smell gas when I came in, but I was young and unsure who to tell or what to do. One day I came home to find a gas company guy on the front lawn with a detector apparently in search of a leak.
All the way down the street I was thinking, “Ha! I knew it!” But, it turned out, it was a routine yearly inspection, nothing reported. Of course I told him about my apartment situation. With a hint of a knowing smile he said its probably nothing but he’d come in and test if I wanted.
It WAS nothing, showed me on his metre. When I said sorry, he said it happens ALL the time. Asked if he’d smelled the gas when we came in and he admitted he had. Then he explained the apartment was simply poorly ventilated and it was just enough to make a slight scent you noticed just when you came in. There was never any danger from this, he assured me. Even if a gas leak developed the smell would become noticeably stronger.
The landlord has to get the stove fixed like it or not , your ex wife may have to report him if he doesn’t fix it. The stove is the landlord responsibility and if the landlord is that big of a jerk it would best for you not to try fix anything .
He could say you cause damages to his apartment. It would be great if your ex wife could find a better landlord but they’re hard to find .
Its not dangerous at all. Its a teensy teensy amount of gas used to run the pilot and it cannot harm anything. I have relit the pilot after being out for a week, and there was virtually no flare (no accumulated gas) even though it smelled strongly (the scent is added to the gas, the strength of the scent has little relation to the amount of gas; the bottom of the tank smells stronger).
Old thread. The opening is about 2 hundreths of an inch, the flame is less than candle sized, the cost is around $1/year, which gives you an idea of how little gas is emitted. basically none.
As for the landlord’s responsibilities, that’s a matter of state and maybe local law. Getting the landlord to live up to those responsibilities is a different matter.
When my divorce was final, one of my happiest moments was when I blocked my ex’s phone number.
I come home to the smell of gas maybe once a month or so. The interesting thing is my gf cannot detect the odor, while it is glaringly obvious to me. I turned up the pilot a tiny bit the last time I was relighting it and that seemed to correct the situation.
Dude, I understand, completely. Bad thing is, she has not signed off on the final divorce settlement, so I still have to be on my best behavior. So far proceedings have been amicable, and the terms are not that bad for me, so I’m not rocking the boat.
As for the gas leak, she finally called maintenance and they cleaned and adjusted the pilot valves. So far the pilots are staying lit. Before the flame was no more than a 1/4 inch, now she says they are 1/2 inch or more.
I’ve only had to try it in Warren, Ohio, but not only did the gas man come out, he condemned the heater. Which was ours. During winter. So it’s good that the pilots were a quick fix. But if needed, the gas guys can lay down the word of god.
Glad the situation got rectified. Just chiming in for the record that I’ve had gas stoves in all my rentals since 1992, and they all have been manual pilots with no electric starts or safeties that I could discern. In my current place, the gas company did work on the building a few years ago and wouldn’t turn anyone’s individual gas back on until techs could access the unit and check/light pilots themselves.
