Fsh! Fsh! (natural gas smell) on GE XL44
August 1, 2010 2:43 PM   Subscribe

A single burner on our GE XL44 natural gas range has been acting up. The flame was orange and would flare up, and then I dusted the burner. Now it's blue. It smells like gas, and still flares up.

My guess is that there's something weird with the amount of air reaching the gas.

None of the other burners or the oven have been behaving like this. Can I replace the one burner that's flaring up inexpensively?

Also, I recently brewed a batch of beer by boiling about 4 gallons of liquid for 60 minutes or so, plus time to heat up, at full heat. The problem started for the first time about halfway through, but I saw no boil-overs or anything. Could that be related?
posted by mccarty.tim to Home & Garden (4 answers total)
 
Gas companies in most places will check on things like this for free, and if it's a simple repair, like unclogging a hole do that too (it's bad for their image when you blow yourself up.).

Also, depending on the make, Home Depot and such places will have replacement burners in stock, or the dealers will, but getting a gas joint replaced (while not that hard) might be something you want someone with experience to do.

Without a major boil over, it probably wasn't the beer, but it could be a little screw (or setting) that has become fouled up.
posted by Some1 at 3:03 PM on August 1, 2010


4 gallons of wort on a stovetop is seriously heavy, and the base of that pot is broad,
so the stovetop itself heats up. It is possible that the combination of weight and heat
caused enough deformation of the stovetop so that the gas jet is no longer properly
aligned in the burner tube (which is rather upstream of the actual burner).

This could result in leakage of gas through the port that is supposed to allow air
into the burner tube (gas smell), and improper mixing of air and gas (orange flame).
Note that the actual burner is downstream of the gas jet and ported burner tube.

I would guess that the burner is okay.
posted by the Real Dan at 3:13 PM on August 1, 2010


Possibly water has run into the burner and sits inside the socket thingy. I had this exact thing happen a few times after something boiled over. Dismembered the burner, dried everything off, put it together again and no smell/swoosh.
posted by Namlit at 4:02 PM on August 1, 2010


I have found that blowing a burner clean with compressed air (while it is off, of course) can work wonders....... clean all the orifices, openings, surfaces...
posted by HuronBob at 5:01 PM on August 1, 2010


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