Pilot lights

[fan-of-fans]

I've always been curious on pilot lights on stoves. Do they put off a lot of heat in the room? I was helping with a wedding at a church once and the kitchen had an American Range 6 burner stove that had a pilot light right in the middle of each burner. People kept seeing the pilot lights on and thought the stove was on. They seemed to put off quite a bit of heat. I remember years ago my parents had a Magic Chef stove with two pilot lights under the top but I don't recall them going out.

Also do pilot lights tend to go out a lot, like if the windows were open? Do they put off a smell? I used to read about people being able to smell if a house had gas because they could smell pilot lights.

 

[gusherb]

My grandmas Caloric cooktop and wall oven all together had 3 pilot lights. As a result the kitchen was always 2-4 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. My grandmas favorite place to sit was by the stove since she was always cold. Ironically her maiden name means "by the stove". She definitely lived up to that name.

 

[askolover]

My old Caloric had 3 pilots.  The oven was a constant 100F...perfect for letting bread rise or even drying shoes (after being washed in the Asko). The top pilots would blow out if I had my window open.  I'd know because of the faint smell of unburned gas.  The first time I walked into this house with the realtor I knew it had gas because of that characteristic smell.  Since I now have spark ignition on the new stove I can't smell that anymore.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The reason pilot lights can produce a smell will become obvious if you lift the stove top or the burner pans that cover the pilot areas. Over years of constant burning, the yellow tip of the flame causes a small inverted cone of carbon to form on the bottom of the plate over the pilot. This carbon can sometimes actually glow red in the flame. If it is removed, the pilots will generally burn cleaner and not produce the smell. You are right, I remember walking into apartment buildings and being able to smell that distinctive odor from the pilot lights. 

 

The first summer after we got air conditioning, my parents experimented with turning off the 2 pilot lights on our Crown stove, but decided that the convenience of the pilots was worth the extra heat .

 

[wayupnorth]

Up here when I was a kid, the majority of kitchen ranges were gas on one side and kerosene heaters on the other. Most had one or more top pilots and a match light oven. But in the winter you could immediately smell the stink from the kerosene heaters walking thru the door.

 

[cornutt]

My great aunt had a big six-burner Roper. Each group of three burners had a pilot. There were flash tubes from each burner leading to a pilot. The pilots were underneath the stove top and well protected against drafts. They caused two little spots on the stove top to always be a bit hot. The oven had a pilot that operated only when the oven was on. It allowed the burner to cycle, but when you turned the oven off, the pilot was shut off. You had to light it with a match. There was a flash tube leading to a hole in the front of the oven floor, right behind the door. You put a match there to light it. It also had a little window where you could observe that the burner was lit. There was a separate broiler with no pilot; you lit it with a match. The water heater, a big old cast iron thing, was also in the kitchen and it too had a pilot. They added some heat to the kitchen, but the house was so drafty that it hardly mattered.

 

[davey7]

I've never had a problem with my range pilots going out (O'Keefe & Merritt deVille, it has 5 pilots - 1 for each two burner pair [total 2], 1 for the griddle/5th burner and one for the broiler and one for the oven). It does keep the kitchen a bit warmer, but not drastically. My previous apartment had a modern Kenmore with electronic ignition, but before that I had a Brown which had a more out/off than on pilot light for the oven - the burner pilots were sucky too. I don't remember them going out much when I was a kid on our ancient Kenmore. Our downstairs neighbor turned the stove top pilots off in summer on her beloved Magic Chef. In college we had some dreadful avocado range which needed to be manually lit DESPITE pilots (the burners, not the oven iirc) - it was neglected, abused and filthy.