Southbend commercial range — a burner pilot that would not light — Ramsey, NJ

The call

A restaurant called about the range they use hardest. One of the cooktop burners had stopped lighting: the pilot for it was out and would not come back.

On a commercial range that is not a small inconvenience. A burner that will not light is a station out of action, and in a working kitchen that tends to be discovered during service rather than before it.

What we found

The burner itself was in good order, and so was its valve. The fault was further back, in the thin tube that carries gas to the pilot.

That tube lives in the hottest, dirtiest part of the range — under the top, in years of heat, grease and cleaning. It had corroded through. Not blocked, not bent: degraded until the metal no longer held. The small brass tee it ran from, the fitting that splits the pilot supply between two burners, had gone the same way.

This is a failure of age and position rather than of use, and it is why the call is worth making rather than guessing. The parts are small and inexpensive, but nothing visible from outside the range points at them.

The fix

Both were replaced — the pilot tube and the brass tee — and the pilots were lit and watched across the whole row before we left, not only on the burner that had been reported.

One boundary worth stating plainly, because this is gas. What we replace is part of the appliance. The gas piping in the building is not ours to touch and never will be: that is a licensed plumber’s work, and we say so rather than reaching for it.

For a kitchen running a range like this every day — a pilot that needs relighting, or one that has quietly got smaller, is worth looking at before it goes out for good. The part costs very little. Losing a burner in the middle of service does not.