Jinx,

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:54:12 +1200, Jinx wrote:

>...
> "Realising that Auckland would
> undergo more power cuts in the years to come, we chose gas
> appliances for water heating, cooking and heating. This week,
> with a 24 hour power cut in Orewa, we have discovered that all
> our new gas appliances have been very carefully designed to need
> electricity to operate the starters. We couldn't override the
> automatic starters and hence had no hot water, no cooking and
> no heating. ...

Well the central heating and hot water I can understand - modern gas water heaters need fans to run the air in and exhaust out, and obviously 
active safety features such as flame-failure detection and overheat prevention need electricity, but a gas cooker?  Surely that should just work by 
turning on the taps - of has the safely culture gone mad and there's electronic control of gas rings now?

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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