Thermocouple

I spent most of a precious Saturday fixing our propane stove. Uncle George had already given his diagnosis over the phone; the thirdhand report I got said something about a "thermal coupler." But first I had to figure out what such a thing even looked like. Several Google searches later, I had the stove's user manual onscreen, with an exploded diagram showing a thermocouple. But because the actual thermocouple I could see in the stove seemed (a) undamaged, (b) very unique to this stove (thus hard to replace and probably expensive), and (c) difficult to extricate, I spent some time assessing what else might be wrong. Finally (after a perusal of the Wikipedia page) I decided that the symptoms did indeed point more strongly to the thermocouple than to anything else; and that I might as well try replacing it even in the absence of a watertight proof. For this I had to turn the heavy cast-iron stove on its side (after removing the stovepipe from it and the wall) -- yet another "this'll take a few minutes" project that grew and grew... But to my surprise, further online searches revealed that nearly all gas stoves and water heaters use the exact same thermocouple -- same size, threads, etc. -- which I went out, bought, and installed; that part was far more straightforward than I expected. In the end: yes, that was it; Uncle George was right; now the stove runs great, and we can heat our den again. One notch up the NSGCD scale.

Afterwards I tried to picture myself as an appliance repairman: toolbelt around the waist and Sony Vaio under the arm, stopping every 15 minutes to clean my hands for another Google search. But laugh while you can, monkey-boy -- I only spent $9, and now I *understand* why the fix worked. Such a deal.