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I have lit gas burners with a match hundreds of times and have never had any trouble. If you have even a fraction of the sense the good Lord gave you, you will realize that you put the flaming match up to the burner FIRST, then turn on the gas. If you turn the gas on, then go looking all round the kitchen for a match, then try to light four or five in succession before you get one lit, all the while with the gas merrily hissing out of the burner, then you will get something exciting. But who in their right mind would do that?
That's not necessarily true about your gas stove not working during a power outage. Mine has dual continuous pilot lights. Granted, they tend to heat up the kitchen during the summer months, but then they compensate for that during the winter when the kitchen is nice and cozy.
Our gas range can be used in a power outage. Controls are fully manual (knobs). I chose the model specifically for this reason.
Its oven has a digital control panel and would be idle during an outage. But the range gets used far more often than the oven anyway.
Propane parlor stove can also be used during an outage.
Same for the radiant propane garage heater.
We were careful to choose both electric and propane heaters in both buildings, because that guarantees some heat during power outages. In our previous CO home, we also had a small wood stove in the house in addition to propane and electric heaters.
Our self lighting gas grill is used when there is no electricity. There was a storm about 10 years ago that caused our section of town to be without electricity for 2 weeks.
Then I learned my next house should be close to a hospital because they are the first to get power restored. Must work. Next Door informs me lots of neighborhoods close to me are frequently without electricity. We rarely have a flicker.
Our self lighting gas grill is used when there is no electricity. There was a storm about 10 years ago that caused our section of town to be without electricity for 2 weeks.
Then I learned my next house should be close to a hospital because they are the first to get power restored. Must work. Next Door informs me lots of neighborhoods close to me are frequently without electricity. We rarely have a flicker.
You just reminded me of living in California during the Enron era of rolling blackouts. That's when I learned that living down the block from a fire station accomplishes the same thing. We do occasionally lose power -- our solar array is grid-tied, so we are not immune to them -- and like you, we have a grill with a side burner for power outages, although our outages are usually short enough that it's not an issue.
That's not necessarily true about your gas stove not working during a power outage. Mine has dual continuous pilot lights. Granted, they tend to heat up the kitchen during the summer months, but then they compensate for that during the winter when the kitchen is nice and cozy.
Yes. Our propane gas stove works just fine (and it does have electronic ignition, but I'm old enough to have used gas stoves for years before electronic ignition - I know how to use a rotary dial telephone, too, fancy that! - and experienced enough to know how not to blow up a burner in my face, for goodness sake!) when the power is off, as do our propane space heaters (after the Great Ice Storm of 1997 when the power was out for 4 days straight, the trees were covered with ice and blocked the drive so we couldn't leave, and we only had CENTRAL propane heat which was useless with the power off, we have three different kinds of heat, none of them central).
Just because your house has gas service doesn't mean it will be easy or inexpensive to have a gas stove. We had a house like that - but the cost to run a gas line from the front of the house (where the meter was) to the rear (where the kitchen was) and of sufficient size to feed four burners and an oven, was enough that we decided to stay with electric. Apparently you need a big gas line to feed a gas stove, much more than even a gas dryer.
I am not afraid of natural gas. I grew up in a time when people paid attention to dangerous things. We used unvented in-room space heaters without safety shut-off valves all winter when it got "cold" (in inverted commas because this was in North Texas, not Minnesota) and never had a problem. Every room in the house I grew up in had a gas jet. When we were done with the space heaters my dad would unthread the gas jet and screw on a cap. We also had wall mounted unvented space heaters in the bathroom. Gas stove, gas furnace. Gas floor furnaces. No one ever blew up or gassed themselves.
We also had guns in the house, kept loaded (a gun's not useful if it's not loaded), power tools, sharp knives, even horses (not at the house, but boarded at a stable out of town) - and if you don't understand that of all that stuff the horses are probably the most dangerous, then you haven't been around horses much.
If we needed to change a light switch or install a new fixture, we pulled out the fuse and wired it in ourselves.
If you are not the kind of person who can recognize dangerous things and use them carefully and appropriately, then a gas stove might not be your best choice, but for that matter, you probably ought to just spend the rest of your life wrapped up in cotton wool.
Duh, I know how to deal with dangerous things. FYI, I grew up in the 80s/90s, I think even then people knew how to handle dangerous things. I was never comfortable with my grandmother's gas range that had the gas shooting out. I've been cooking since I was a child, btw, and that was unnerving. And before anyone says anything, I was supervised while I cooked. While I'm obviously not scared, I don't feel comfortable with gas appliances. Sue me. But I have them and I'm not about to spend more money to convert, so it is what it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bungalove
That's not necessarily true about your gas stove not working during a power outage. Mine has dual continuous pilot lights. Granted, they tend to heat up the kitchen during the summer months, but then they compensate for that during the winter when the kitchen is nice and cozy.
I don't have a range, I have a Profile cooktop. it absolutely did not ignite during an outage.
My granny was a skilled cook who made 3 meals a day for 14 people on a wood stove. Plus she had to grow anything she cooked. She did trade eggs for dairy.
My aunt had a kerosene stove. Anything is a step up from that.
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