Okeefe and merritt oven pilot and saftey valve, how it works?

[christer89]

The oven lights up just fine and thermostat sems to work! Whole stove restored in -95. Just convered it to lpg gas, and (just bought the stove)
One thing i dont know, the oven saftey valve , how it works or shuld work,
Its the okeefe and merritt original saftey valve MR 2 , (allsow reabuildt in -95j
when i turn on the gas i light the pilots on the stove top, and then in oven, gas just flows directly in to the pilot in oven, without pushing any thing or so!
If i dont light the oven pilot, shuld the saftey valve Cut the gas flow to the pilot? or just the oven burner? Shuld i just turn on gas, and not light the oven pilot sniff after 5min and se If gas still flows out the oven pilot?
( ofcourse Keeping oven and brawer open and Windows open etc)

I have to Hold the red bottom to light the oven, then next time it works by just turn oven on to light it, If i blow out the pilot in oven, no gas comes to oven burner, so that feels safe...., but gas still flows to the pilot, that part i dont feel safe with, it shuld stop after a while right?
, easyer If i knew exactly how it SHULD work,

Is it safe having pilots on the stove top?or a hazzard? I wounder what happens If one pilot goseout and the other is lighted, on stove top, LPG gas is heavy, is it that mutch gas coming out ,so other pilot will ignite all of the leaked gas on the stove top?
but i would like to use the pilots, and be safe about it, its mutch more easy than lighting with match every time, maybe just me being fussy about it, Im not used to it,
Any thoughts
Im from sweden, so not the best english or pilots habit.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Hi!

Don't worry about your English. It is better than most of what I hear from newscasters and in commercials everyday.

 

I have a gas stove outside, which is the only place I would have one, strictly for power outage emergencies. Got sie dank, I have not had to use it for years, but it is a pilot ignition type and when you turn on the gas valve to the stove, gas is fed to the oven and cooktop burner pilots. It has no "safety sentry" system like you are looking for so there is nothing to shut off that gas flow if the pilot goes out. Some decades ago, in a nice, 1960s apartment building on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington, DC, the living room picture window was blown out of an apartment one morning because of just such an event. The oven pilot flame was somehow extinguished, the gas accumulated and when a light switch was thrown, the spark ignited the gas. Fortunately, there was not enough to cause a fire after the initial blast. An older lady to whom I used to give a ride home on Saturdays lived in the building and told me the particulars. What a way to start the day!

 

[brucelucenta]

The old ones were kind of dangerous. I remember that too. It has a constant flow of gas to the pilots on the stovetop and oven. If you have an interruption in the gas flow you have a potential explosion!!! Don't know why they didn't make them like dryers and hot water tanks that you have to light the pilot after pushing the safety in. Those have no such problem.

 

[tomturbomatic]

One thing you were cautioned to avoid doing was letting the oven door slam shut, and not just when there was a cake in the oven, because it might blow out the pilot light.

 

[davey7]

I had to replace my pilot assembly when I took possession of my OkM. The gas consumption's not a problem with piped gas supply, but since that existerer inte i Sverige, det kanske blir ett problem för dej.

 

[norgeway]

NO DANGER!!!

ALL old ranges with pilots for the top burners would take literally weeks in a sealed room to gather enough gas for a explosion, the oven pilots do have safeties, BUT on match light ovens, OR if a top pilot was out and the burner was turned on..THEN you could have a big BANG, but common sense prevails, if you get a faint smell of gas,you go re light the pilot.

 

[combo52]

Yes No Danger At All

There was typically no safety shut-off on the gas supply for gas range pilots because the amount of gas that would escape into the room even if you blew out all three or more pilots would never cause a safety problem even with heaver than air propane gas.

 

But thankfully selling gas ranges with constant burning pilots has finally ceased in the US thanks to the Obama administration, California banned these in 1976-7 and it took this long to finally get this common sense requirement passed into law.

 

On lightly used gas ranges up 90% or more of the total gas consumption could be the gas burned by the CBPs, also the typical gas range in the US with 3 CBPs can cost anywhere from $6- almost $20 per month [ depending on local gas prices and whether Natural or Propane gas ] just for the gas burned by the pilots.

 

These fees are just one more factor that often kept generally poorer renters poorer as cheap better off landlords would buy these cheap gas ranges with CBPs and stick the tenants with the bill for the gas. Its funny how on buildings we work in where the management pays for the gas all the gas ranges with CBPs were gone decades ago.

 

John L.

 

 

 

[davey7]

I think he's mostly worried because pilot lights are unknown for the most part in Sweden and gas ranges almost unheard of in Sweden (only a few bigger towns still have gas service, and I think Scania [only place I've ever heard of domestic gas heating in Sweden - it's normally electric, district or, less and less, oil] ). I'd always thought, as an aside, that even on the continent, gas ranges were match light or had automatic ignition many years ago. Houses there are much, much tighter too, so there might be issues with draft for combustion or if the pilot went out.

When I had an individual gas bill (last two apartments, one with pilot, one without) the gas bill was never very much (the place with the new range had the water heater on my nut if I recall correctly)- or at least the gas itself was never very much.