We picked up the last of the food for Thanksgiving this afternoon, stopped at Borders, and also went to Home Depot to pick up a gas log. We had hoped to have it installed for Thanksgiving Day, when James' mom, sister and niece come for dinner.

He had trouble from the start. When the house was built, they pre-installed a gas starter. We asked them not to, but it never got put into writing, so they didn't know not to do it. James got the starter itself off okay, but the pipe leading from the starter into the wall had an S-bend (I guess that's what they call it) and there was no way to unscrew it. If you turned it more than 180°, it would hit the bricks and not turn the rest of the way. (I have no idea how they screwed it on!!!)

James got his mototool and cut it off, and then was able to unscrew the rest of the pipe.

So far, so good. I had pre-assembled the burner and the pan and James used the joint compound included to attach the joint to this part, and again to attach the valve to the gas pipe from the wall.

To connect the burner and the pipe in the wall is a flexible pipe which has to be bent gently in order that it won't kink and block the gas flow. The video that comes with the gas log showed the man doing the demo bending it easily. Like us, he had to bend it in a complete circle to fit it into the space in the fireplace.

James worked it as gently as he could, but it was tougher to turn than it looked on the DVD. Eventually it kinked in the middle. When he tried to unkink it, it kinked on the opposite side.

So we need another pipe, dammit. If we try to unbend the one now, it looks like it might break.

The DVD said it should take about an hour to install. Hah!

Labels: house

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:03:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment