How Does My Water Heater Work?
Monday, July 6th, 2009 at
1:41 am
I have a water heater that works on gas, but I don’t understand how it starts up. I know it doesn’t have an electric starter because we were out of electric during the big blackout. I don’t know what other kind of starter there is.
Tagged with: Does • Heater • Water • Work
Filed under: Home Repair
I’m willing to bet you have a pilot light on that heater. A pilot light is a small continuous flame that burns right next to the main burner. If you take off the door in the front of the heater right under the temp.controls, you will see the pilot flame. In case your worried that gas will continue to flow if something extinguishes the flame, there is a thermocouple that shuts off the flow of gas if the flame stops.
On the mechanism that has the water temperature dial, there usually is a little knob that has three settings, “On,” “Pilot,” and “Off.” If the heater hasn’t been on in a while, turn this to “Off” for about 10 minutes to clear out any excess gas. If you smell gas after the 10 mintues, you might have a leak. Turn the temperature dial to the lowest setting and put the knob to the “Pilot” setting (you may have to hold the buttom down while turning). Use a long match to make contact with the ignitor. Once it lights, turn the knob to “On” and it should work on its own from there.
it has a pilot light and a thermostat. the pilot light is a continuous flame to ignite the main burner when the thermostat relays that the burner is needed to heat the water to a set temperature. then the main burner shuts off until needed again
Older water heater have a pilot light. When the temp. falls below the setting, the thermostatic
open the gas valve and the polot light start the flame.
it has a pilot light and a thermostat—when it drops below the set temp, the gas valve opens and the pilot light ignites it, which heats your water !!!
same way a gas furnace works, if its gas it has a pilot light