Reading smashedmotif's journal

Dear Journal,

Yesterday I had an opportunity to install a range in a kitchen. The kitchen was familiar to me, and so was connecting gas tubes to previously installed gas lines. The only thing different here was, the range happened to be a very large range and the gas lines were installed many, many years ago.

My first challenge was figuring how to manuever on a floor covered in ghee. The previous night someone accidently spilled a large amount of ghee. Walking on the floor was very difficult because the ghee made the floor very slippery.

A second delimma I had was, unscrewing a pipe fitting from the main gas line. It took two monkey wrenches to do the job; one to hold one side of the fixture and the other wrench to actually unscrew the pipe fitting that needed removing.

The range happened to be on casters and with the floor at a slight incline, it didn't want to stay in place. Having ghee all over the floor didn't help either. Pushing the range in place was next to impossible.

The challenges didn't end. For once the range was in place, I had to hold it in place with one shoulder, engage the locks on the front casters -- that I found a bit later -- all the while trying to maintain traction on the floor with my feet. In order to maintain traction, I used the spice rack behind me to brace my leg. The spice rack in turn was braced against a support column, part of the buildings structure.

Finally, after the range was in place and the gas line was connected from the range to the pipeline, I had only to light the standing pilots.

The installation directions of the range did not have any diagram. Instead, the directions were merely a series of steps to follow. Even thought there existed a total of only five steps to follow, it took me an hour to absorb them. A person can never be too cautious when it comes to working with gas lines.

The terminology used to explain the subsequence steps, as typed on the range's installation instructions were difficult to understand. Terminology such as a pilot valve and standing pilot made for confusion in properly understanding the instructions.

It took a little searching on the internetwork to determine what a pilot valve was and what a standing pilot was. The former was the valve on the main pipeline. This valve supplies gas from the pipeline to the range. The standing pilots were the pilots lights that are manufactured just under the burners of the range's top, where a sauce pan rests when heating.

Lighting the standing pilots was a test of confidence. That is, confidence in the installation of the range and confidence in the range's integrity were the only things now pressing on my mind.

When lighting the range, I ended up using a tightly rolled up wrapper taken from a pound of butter. The standing pilots were lighted and the range worked well. The easiest part of the whole ordeal was in igniting the pilot light for the oven.

Ligthing the oven's pilot light required two steps. First, I had to press the red button located on the range's front, at the center, just behind the stainless steel panel that was located below the hinge of the oven's door. To light this pilot light, I only had to hold the big red button, then press once the other red button.

Once the pilot light for the oven was correctly lighted, it was time to announce that the range was ready for use.

That night, I was part of a three person crew who made 500 cookies. Because the two-rack oven only came with one rack piece at the time of shipment, we ended up baking cooking until zero-dark thirty in the morning.

At least the stove works and I'm alive to tell about it.

Now I think I'll have one of those cookies.

自作自受

This post was edited by smashedmotif on Mar 26, 2007.