Saturday, August 24, 2013

Why Can't You Order Gas Appliances Set Up For Propane??

Our old gas stove, the one The Old Lady used to give me "Burnt Offerings". It came in a mobile home we bought in 1973. The stove had a problem within the first year when it was still under warranty. We had it fixed and it worked fine until recently. During the past year or so we noticed we had problems baking. Turned out the valve that controls the oven burner was screwing up and the oven would get too hot.

This is the new stove. When we went to Lowes to buy it, I asked about getting it set up for propane. I knew that gas appliances come set up for natural gas, but hoped that it would be possible to get one set up for propane from the factory seeing as how they didn't have this stove in stock and had to order it. The guy at Lowes said it is easy to switch it over to propane, there are the instructions on how to do it. RIGHT!!! Lowes doesn't do the conversion probably because if they had someone that knows how to do that, they would have to pay that person more. Also to keep from being sued if the stove blows up!!

The owners manual covers every fucking stove they make, so there are multiple examples of how to do the conversion. Instead of pictures they have drawings to show how to do the conversion. Also the instructions are incomplete, like it says to remove the top you have to remove two nuts underneath the top. It doesn't say a fucking thing about disconnecting the burners from the stove top. Figured that one out on my own. With the stovetop off I was able to change the regulator from natural gas to propane and change the jets (or nozzles) in the burners.

Converting the oven was another cluster fuck. It showed a couple of illustrations showing how you can remove the knob for the oven control and turn a screw to convert to propane. Didn't see any screws behind the knob, so I removed the control only to discover there wasn't a screw to turn. Then for the oven burner it showed an illustration for just the burner nozzle. No mention of whether or not you have to remove the burner tube to make it look like the illustration or what. It just said "use a half inch wrench to turn it clockwise until snug". When I put a wrench on it, it felt snug already. It took considerable effort just to get the damn thing to move. Also it said "don't overtighten" , RIGHT!! It would have been nice if they would have given some indication of how many turns it takes to go from natural gas to propane. Also a picture showing a wrench in place would have been nice.

Now we have to learn how to cook with this stove. It has three different size burners. A large one, a simmer one and two sized in between. That's no problem other than the turning the burner control to light and then adjust the flame once it lights. With the old stove you turned the knob enough for gas to come out and the pilot would light the burner. This one has an electric spark that lights the burner. What may take some time to figure out is baking in the oven. The last time The Old Lady baked a pie in the old stove it came out practically incinerated. Last night she baked another pie and it came out very pale even tho she baked it longer than usual. May have to set the temp higher and bake a little longer to get the desired results.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Ganjay Supta



Interesting!!

A Dilemna












Turns out there is a dilemna about the spelling of the word. Is it dilemna or dilemma??

How Long A Period Of Sleep Is A Wink??
























Or how do you catch a wink as in catching 40 winks?? This morning I woke up and looked at the time on the clock radio and thought I'd roll over and try to catch 40 winks. Then wondered about how long is a wink and almost didn't fall asleep again. Thru sheer effort of will I was able to go back to sleep. I'm usually pretty good at that.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

One Of The Usual Suspects

This morning The Old Lady looked out and saw one of the rats that has been eating her flowers and grapevines, etc. He is a nice looking "rat with antlers". An eight point buck.


Took this picture thru the storm door on the back door. Didn't want to scare him away as he was only about 15 feet away and I wanted to get a clear picture. I usually don't see bucks around, just the does, but this guy hasn't been bothered here and I guess he feels pretty safe in coming around in daylight.
Here he is browsing on an apple tree. Or as The Old Lady would say, "Giraffe eating the acacia tree". All the apple trees have all the lower branches stripped of leaves.

This I think is a picture of the same guy taken two years ago. That time he was with his sister and mother.

Friday, August 2, 2013

On Being Treated Like a Greek God

As long as we've been together The Old Lady has been treating me like a Greek God. She gives me burnt offerings. Yesterday she had a legitimate excuse, the oven fucked up. She was baking a pie and checked on it halfway thru the time for baking and it was already starting to burn. She turned the oven down and I checked a few minutes later. Even with the oven set at 300* the temp was over 500*. Looks like the control valve for the oven isn't working properly. The gas stove is 40 years old and we've had to replace the control valve once before (that time it had the opposite problem, the burner would come on until it reached the set temp and then wouldn't come on again even when the oven cooled), but that was when the stove was still under warranty. Now the question is whether we get the old stove repaired or break down and buy a new stove. One of the things we've liked about this stove is when the power goes out, it still works. Gas stoves with a clock or other electrical stuff won't work when the power goes out. You may be able to light the burners with a match, but that is about it, the oven won't work. The Old Lady is starting to look at stoves online. She found one that uses batteries to ignite the burners, so that may work when the power goes out. (Actually we are pretty fortunate with the power situation, it's not very often that we are without power and when it does go out it is restored in a matter of hours.)