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Post by kellyjo40 on Dec 21, 2015 2:53:01 GMT -5
I am jealous Nana, and happy for you at the same time. I really can'take wait to get Patience out of her crate now.
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Post by nana on Dec 21, 2015 17:02:14 GMT -5
Hi kellijo40--now I know who you are! You will absolutely love your stove. No doubt in my mind at all.
Pooka, yes indeed. It's not only about doing a better job cooking what you already know how to do, but seeing vast new vistas opening up in cooking things you've never tried before, or doing old things in new better ways. There is a lot of fun in store for me, I can tell.
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Post by nana on Dec 23, 2015 19:01:58 GMT -5
Oh it was so nice while it lasted! My oven is not working again. The thermocouple is bad; the pilot keeps going out again, no matter how high we turn it. Don is sending a new part, but of course with the holidays and all I am probably looking at the new year before it is all fixed. I will not be denied my Christmas cookies! I will bake them in January if I have to! But boy, am I disappointed.
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Post by pooka on Dec 24, 2015 0:31:19 GMT -5
The intermittent nature of that bad thermocouple must be maddening, but they don't go bad that often. Once you get that squared away, you should be all set. For now, c'est la vie. It's just a part of the circuitous nature of of an interesting life.
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Post by kellyjo40 on Dec 24, 2015 19:54:56 GMT -5
Oh, Nana, I would be so disappointed too. Chin up, though, think of how long your Christmas will last!
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Post by nana on Dec 26, 2015 10:34:40 GMT -5
No oven? No problem! I had to bake SOMETHING on Christmas, so I made cranberry nut bread in the thermowell. My loaf pans don't fit so I used a cake pan. And after that was done, the well did maple glazed carrots just pulled from my astoundingly still unfrozen garden. Also visible in the picture are Marilyn's new name tag and the hummingbird tile that will be in the center of her new back splash. Merry Christmas!
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Post by karitx on Dec 28, 2015 16:46:06 GMT -5
That is one awesome looking t-well cake! And I adore the hummingbird tile!
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Post by kellyjo40 on Dec 30, 2015 0:26:44 GMT -5
Absolutely LOVE the hummingbird tile. Unfortunately, it is giving me ideas!
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Post by chipperhiker on Dec 30, 2015 11:45:08 GMT -5
Nana, what color is Marilyn? Is she blue, or white or grey? I'm having a blue dress moment. : )
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Post by nana on Dec 30, 2015 18:40:30 GMT -5
Marilyn is pale pastel blue. Very lovely!
Update: The gas company fella was here today again. Kevin. I'm getting to be on a first name basis with him. He put in the new thermocouple Don sent, and guess what? Didn't work. It was old in age, I guess, but brand new out of its package. It needed to put out 30 millivolts to keep the valve open, but could only manage 24, no matter how he positioned it. So it works for a short time, but his best guess is any tiny fluctuation in the flame is just enough to drop the voltage and shut the gas off. I know more about thermocouples now than I ever wanted too. He spoke to Don on the phone who couldn't explain it either, and what needs to happen now is Kevin will get a thermocouple for a gas furnace(since the company up here doesn't have old stove parts on hand) and jerry rig a bracket to hold it in the right place to do the job. Right now, he thinks if I want to use the oven, I can light the pilot, turn on the oven right away, and hopefully the heat of the oven would allow the thermocouple to keep the gas on till I turn the burner off again. Kind of iffy. I asked him if it would be possible to put it back to lighting the oven with a match like it used to be, because if I have to relight the pilot every time I want to bake something, I may as well just light the oven and be done with it. He said yeah, it would be possible but he wasn't in favor of it. So that's where I am. What really stinks is I got to use my oven just the one time, and it was so great, so now Instead of imagining, I actually know what I'm missing.
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Post by mach12 on Dec 30, 2015 21:33:29 GMT -5
It's surprising how often replacement parts are defective and that was probably the majority of my workload when I was a field service rep. I always expected to see the problem again no matter how much we tried to get the word out of defective lots or designs so kept all of the info just in case and 9 times out of 10 the problem would show up again. This sure sounds like one of those kinds of situations.
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Post by pooka on Dec 31, 2015 1:22:10 GMT -5
I've been lucky the few times I've had to deal with a bad thermocouple. Once on a water heater & once on my old converted coal furnace. All I had to do is go down the road to get a new one. You just had to measure the length. Around here a part like that is readily available.
I'm sorry your road to fireless cooking has been so rocky. Your Marilyn is being especially cranky settling in. Is she being overly delicate or just a diva?
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Post by nana on Dec 31, 2015 8:40:51 GMT -5
She doesn't seem diva like, because she really wants to cook. I think more like a seriously talented and willing worker plagued by a tragic flaw. Again, a lot like Marilyn Monroe. Maybe I should have named her Norma Jean, so she would be innocent and fresh, before all her Hollywood woes got the best of her. But it's too late...she already has a name tag... The thermocouple problem is made worse by the fact that that the thermocouple she had when she got here, and also the new one Don sent, were a one piece thing--the pilot flame is coming out of the tube that holds the thermocouple too, so you have to replace the whole assembly, not just the bad part, which means cutting the pipe and pulling it out and then replacing it--well, you get the picture. Job security for Kevin, I guess.
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Post by pooka on Dec 31, 2015 10:25:00 GMT -5
As long as she doesn't meet a tragic end surrounded by mystery, I guess you'll be OK.
I'm mostly from an era where you fly by the seat of your pants & you can blow yourself to kingdom come if your not mindful. I know having a safety on a stove can make it much safer, but It's just another thing to go bad. With my stove, either you've got gas & it works or not. About the only thing that can go wrong is have a plugged up gas line somewhere or something purely mechanical goes wrong.
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Post by Chuckie on Dec 31, 2015 10:49:41 GMT -5
Marilyn is pale pastel blue. Very lovely! Update: The gas company fella was here today again. Kevin. I'm getting to be on a first name basis with him. He put in the new thermocouple Don sent, and guess what? Didn't work. It was old in age, I guess, but brand new out of its package. It needed to put out 30 millivolts to keep the valve open, but could only manage 24, no matter how he positioned it. So it works for a short time, but his best guess is any tiny fluctuation in the flame is just enough to drop the voltage and shut the gas off. I know more about thermocouples now than I ever wanted too. He spoke to Don on the phone who couldn't explain it either, and what needs to happen now is Kevin will get a thermocouple for a gas furnace(since the company up here doesn't have old stove parts on hand) and jerry rig a bracket to hold it in the right place to do the job. Right now, he thinks if I want to use the oven, I can light the pilot, turn on the oven right away, and hopefully the heat of the oven would allow the thermocouple to keep the gas on till I turn the burner off again. Kind of iffy. I asked him if it would be possible to put it back to lighting the oven with a match like it used to be, because if I have to relight the pilot every time I want to bake something, I may as well just light the oven and be done with it. He said yeah, it would be possible but he wasn't in favor of it. So that's where I am. What really stinks is I got to use my oven just the one time, and it was so great, so now Instead of imagining, I actually know what I'm missing. I had to use bailing wire on mine, to keep the thermocouple tip in the hottest part of the pilot flame. As an aside, mine's been in there since September '09, and still going strong. Once I had to adjust the pilot gas up as it kept going out, and someone told me that might be a sign the thermocouple was getting 'weak'. It's been fine ever since though... As an aside, our old furnace had been in since 1983. It had the original thermocouple on it, and was still working fine when we replaced it w/a 99% efficient new furnace a coupla years ago (our level pay gas bill went down 50%!)...
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Post by pooka on Dec 31, 2015 16:17:00 GMT -5
My furnace has been there since about 1960. It started out as a coal burner since it was still cheap enough & available at the time. It got converted to gas some years later. I'm not sure when, but it still works. I've put a new blower motor, thermocouple & safety valve on it since I've lived here, which has been about twenty two years. I wish I could afford to replace it among other things around here, but there not enough spare cash to do it.
I've only got thirty two more payments before the house is mine free & clear. Maybe then I can think about replacing things like the roof, plumbing & electric service to start after that. I may live long enough to put my house back in shape, but for now I just have to live & work with what I've got such as it is. I'm lucky enough to have the talent to fix & patch things up here & there as best as my budget allows. At least I have a roof over my head. Some people don't have that.
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Post by nana on Dec 31, 2015 16:59:52 GMT -5
As long as she doesn't meet a tragic end surrounded by mystery, I guess you'll be OK. You can't see me right now Pooka, but I'm making the sign to ward off the evil eye! I actually had been blaming myself because we have to frequently change our computer password at work, and in order not to be constantly forgetting my new password, I always make it a phrase like a wish or an affirmation about something important to me, and my password while I was waiting for my stove to arrive was "cookonmarilyn", which of course, turned out to literally be the only thing I could do--cook ON her, not in the oven or thermowell. Be careful what you wish for! Could typing that in so many times have somehow caused these problems. Well, certainly no, but I did change my password a few weeks ago to "marilynisfixed" just in case!
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