This is a question people sometimes ask when they look at the furnaces professionals currently install in homes, or when they see a new furnace in a home. Most current homeowners likely grew up in houses with furnaces that used pilot lights, or owned a furnace with a pilot light. Yet the pilot light is becoming an endangered species in home heating.
What happened? Why has the standing pilot light been extinguished, and what took its place?
This isn’t just trivia questions. You can understand a good deal about your furnace’s operation and how it uses energy when you know a bit more about the fate of the standing pilot light.
One of the odd troubles we face in Southern California when it comes to home heating is that it’s easy to let a heater stay around for far too long in a house. When people don’t rely too often on a system like a gas furnace, they often don’t consider when it’s old enough that it needs to be replaced.
We experienced a colder beginning of the year than is usual for Southern California—although many other parts of the country would laugh at what we consider “cold”! If your household is one of the many that uses a natural gas furnace for warmth during the winter, you probably got some serious use from it during January and early February.