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Housewife (small rants)

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Silur
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Housewife (small rants)

Post by Silur »

I've recently made a radical carreer move, and attained the coveted position of being an american housewife - you know, shopping, drinking lattes, watching soap operas, etc. Well, I'll get around to the latter if we ever get a TV. Peggy Bundy is my role model in all ways except perhaps hair style. This gives me an entirely different perspective on life (and time to post on GB), so I'm leaving all the political, socio-economic and religious discussions aside to focus on some _real_ issues.

For starters, there's the stove. We have a gas stove, which is great, since temperature control is way better than anything electric, but... Who got the brilliant idea to have small flames burning in various places of the thing ALL THE TIME? It gives a completely new meaning to the question "did I leave the stove on?". I guess the answer would be "just a little". Besides me being a bit nervous of having small flames burning perpetually in the house - well, no, not perpetually - they go out sometimes, and my question is, since there is no safety nozzle on these burners, where does the gas go when the flame goes out? Do I want to know, or am I much happier being ignorant?

I try to be environmentally conscious (and in this state I think it's almost mandatory), so I ask myself how much more hydrocarbons are being used by having the stove lit all the time instead of lighting it when I need it. In my wife's case, it's probably a 1:1000000 ratio, since she isn't allowed near cooking gear without supervision, but in my case? On an average, I use the stove four times in a day. Assuming I use a regular lighter and not a piezoelectric lighter, it takes about one second of gas to light up. That's four seconds out of 86400, which gives that I now use 21600 times more gas.

That burning gas continuously heats up the topside of the stove to be quite hot, which adds to the general heat in the room. If I lived closer to the arctic, I would perhaps be happy about that, but here I use an airconditioner to cool down the room. How much of the AC capacity is used just to cool down the heat generated by the stove? Since I don't know the exact gas flow, I can only estimate, but assuming that the efficiency of the AC is about 10, and the output heat is roughly 10W (counting conservatively on both accounts), gives that I use 1W electrical power as well. Since it's a crappy AC, I would prefer if it spent all it's energy on just cooling the room.

Since I'm all against this web 2.0 nonsense, I refuse to blog and will instead update this thread as more rants turn up.

Edit: Getting rusty, am I. Forget spam allowance, I did. Spam on topic please, which, considering the topics varying nature is fairly liberal. Also, even though I am mocking some aspects of the US culture, lets not turn this into a US bashing thread. They do have some excellent things here as well, like fresh lemons, really cheap gas prices and, in our case, excellent child care.
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Xandax
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Post by Xandax »

Silur wrote:<snip>
Since I'm all against this web 2.0 nonsense, I refuse to blog and will instead update this thread as more rants turn up.
Come on over to the Dark Side, you know you want to. I'll even set up a .net blog for you :D
"Grumpy Old Housewife" would be an excellent title for your blog I think. Or StoveMania from the look of it :D

Oh, and I have no idea about your stove problem. I'd freak out if my stove was on fire constantly and demand somebody fix it.
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Post by Tricky »

You are scaring me.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
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Post by Claudius »

the burner should be turned off when not in use? right?
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Silur
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Post by Silur »

Xandax wrote:Come on over to the Dark Side, you know you want to. I'll even set up a .net blog for you :D
Oh no, I claim the moral high ground and stand by the only true god, Tim Berners-Lee. You infidels will soon see how the empty hype will fall to pieces all around you and the True Web will prevail ;-)
Xandax wrote:"Grumpy Old Housewife" would be an excellent title for your blog I think. Or StoveMania from the look of it :D
Don't worry, I have other rants. I could mention that there is now only one country left in the world that doesn't use A4 as the standard paper size. It's the same one that isn't using the metric system at all - except sometimes to throw small things really hard at large planets. Even the British have seen the light these days, with the acre biting the EU bullet just recently.
Xandax wrote:Oh, and I have no idea about your stove problem. I'd freak out if my stove was on fire constantly and demand somebody fix it.
What if the world around you claims that it's fine the way it is? The assylum door is the one leading out from my apartment, and I lock it thoroughly from the inside.
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Xandax
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Post by Xandax »

Silur wrote:<snip>
What if the world around you claims that it's fine the way it is? The assylum door is the one leading out from my apartment, and I lock it thoroughly from the inside.
Seeing as you are in a country with a liberal approach to handguns - I truly fail to see your point :mischief:
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Post by dragon wench »

ROFL!
You could just set up a blog here at GB you know :D
What if the world around you claims that it's fine the way it is? The assylum door is the one leading out from my apartment, and I lock it thoroughly from the inside.
We have a gas stove... it's great! I like it because it burns much hotter and it can be instantly controlled. But I know people who are unused to cooking with gas are often nervous initially.
Really, as long as you practice basic common sense there's nothing to it. We have used the kind where you need to light a pilot as well as the type that is automatically controlled by a switch.
The gas never actually goes away, you just trigger it when you need the stove :p :D
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Silur
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Post by Silur »

Claudius wrote:the burner should be turned off when not in use? right?
That was the general idea, yes. But if I lift the top off, there are two small flames (I think they're called pilots) burning, so that if I decide to cook something, I only need to turn the knob and the burner will "light itself" from the pilot. I have a self-lighting gas stove in my "other home", but it lights electrically. The engineer that built this model should be cooked over a slow fire... incidentally, I have a pair.

@Tricky: Which part? ;-)
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Post by Tower_Master »

Silur wrote:Don't worry, I have other rants. I could mention that there is now only one country left in the world that doesn't use A4 as the standard paper size. It's the same one that isn't using the metric system at all - except sometimes to throw small things really hard at large planets.
Wait...You mean it ISN'T the rest of the world's imperative duty to adapt to the US' way of life??? :rolleyes:

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Silur
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Post by Silur »

Xandax wrote:Seeing as you are in a country with a liberal approach to handguns - I truly fail to see your point :mischief:
Ah, but only the locals get to have them. How safe do you think that makes me feel? Luckily there are very few locals living nearby - the main population in the area being Chinese, probably.

@DW: The gas bit is fine, it's the pilot I get all worked up about. You know, "stove + cooking oil + me not home + open flame"-kind of worried. I prefer things to be off, meaning "really, completely, no burning parts off" when I leave the house.

@Tower_master: It is, we just haven't realized it yet.
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Post by Georgi »

Silur wrote:@DW: The gas bit is fine, it's the pilot I get all worked up about. You know, "stove + cooking oil + me not home + open flame"-kind of worried. I prefer things to be off, meaning "really, completely, no burning parts off" when I leave the house.
Did you try not leaving the cooking oil on the stove? :p
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Silur
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Post by Silur »

Clearness is perhaps not my most prominent side, and I guess ranting in itself seldom invites to easy understanding ;-)

It's not the gas stove in itself that scares me - I have used plenty of those. I have, however, never used one that's "pre-lit", with a small flame (pilot?) inside. The ones I have encountered previously either light with a piezo-electric lighting device inside the stove, or the more primitive kind that you need to set a match/lighter/spark to.

Now, I know for a fact that if those pilot lights go out, gas keeps coming out through the little pilot gas nozzles. I also know that they go out occasionally. So if I go on vacation for a month, how much gas-air mix could I potentially find my home filled with when I come back? That is the part that scares me.

As for cooking oil on the stove, I try to keep it away but it keeps finding its way back! I guess it's friends with some of the other black greasy spots there. :D
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Post by Claudius »

That is pretty crazy that there is no way to turn it off when you are on vacation !
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Post by Gwalchmai »

That little flame on each of your burners is a pilot light, which you might also have on your hot water heater and your furnace if they run off of gas. Its there to make ignition of the burners and oven easy, without the need for matches (which some older stoves still need). The pilot light keeps a thermocouple heated, that leaves the small gas line open while the pilot is lit. If the pilot goes out, then the thermocouple shuts off the gas to the pilot, so you won’t end up exploding your house when you come home from vacation.

Yes, the pilot light uses a small amount of gas constantly. But it also ensures that if you (or perhaps a growing toddler :p ) were to accidentally turn a burner or the oven ON, then the gas will light instead of just hiss out and fill the room with a deadly concentration. I recently used a gas stove that had electric igniters, which were great, but if you turned the knob too fast past the “lite” setting, the burner didn’t light, and gas just escaped (which stank up the house). So the pilot lights offer a little safety. I’ve read that the pilot light consumes about 1200 BTU's an hour.
That there; exactly the kinda diversion we coulda used.
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Silur
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Post by Silur »

Gwalchmai wrote:So the pilot lights offer a little safety. I’ve read that the pilot light consumes about 1200 BTU's an hour.
I see your point, but wouldn't it just be better to put the safety valve on the burner itself? As it happens, most stoves in boats I have sailed use this method and are generally manually lit. There's usually a small peg that needs to be heated before the gas stays flowing. The stove in our regular apartment also works that way, but doesn't have an oven.

1200 BTU's is roughly equivalent of 350 Wh, right? That's roughly the equivalent of leaving every light in our entire apartment on permanently. It was actually worse than I though... I'm using at least 10% of my AC capacity to cool down what the stove is heating up.

Soon, I'll start my next rant - plumbing, and more specifically the large gaping hole in my sink that swallows everything but grinds almost nothing.
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