Can Gas Pressure Regulator Be Causing My Pilot Light To Go Out?

Yes.

Yes.

the pilot light on my water heater started to go out.

There is a thermocouple (thin wite with a tip) being heated by the pilot burner.

(a) If the thermocouple is deviated from the pilot flame,

(b) if the thermocouple tip is dirty with carbon,

(c) if the pilot burner nozzle cogged with dirt,

(d) if the pilot gas pressure is less, the pilot will go off.

Your case will be (d) so call them, else do (b) with a wire brush.

Good point. and when you call your service guy to replace the pilot generator, tell him the call and expense will be on him--after he takes it out of what you paid for an unnecessary regulator. If he balks, offer to reimburse the few dollars for the pilot generator. He'll probably take the offer and forego the $labor.

I recently woke up to no hot water. My hot water tank (27 some years old) is going to be replaced this year when I re-do my basement. I didn't want to buy a new hot water tank (as a boiler will be replacing it later this year) so instead I replaced the thermocouple. It cost me about 8 bucks and took all of ten minutes. Problem solved!

It could be as simple as that, for my money its worth a try before paying a call-out fee.....

Start with the heating guy. It is very likely that when the gas company did their thing, they broke loose some contaminants that fouled your water heater pilot.. Probably just needs cleaning.

Good answer, I rated it so too!!

Hold on with those attaboys, leastwise because Guest K.C.'s (OP's) question is a bit short on details.

It being his gas company, a problem stemming from the regulator replacement (presumably for life-cycle maintenance? K.C.?)--as in "break-loose" contamination--is not likely. If, by contamination, is mean air--and enough to snuff the pilot (which would probably have to be at higher elevation than the service line downstream of the regulator--one would have to ask why the air has not already been purged; and why the pilot is able to be repeatedly re-lit. Water/moisture introduced into the line is another possibility, albeit improbable given the work was done by gas company specialists.

More likely is that the new regulator exposed a fault in pilot light calibration vis-a-vis gas intake pressure (as regulated by the old regulator). The gas company perhaps should have checked pilot calibrations inside the house more carefully when they were re-lit after the regulator change out. Calling the gas company back out is probably the only best answer at this point and given the information K.C. has made available. While he waits for them, it's also possible the problem will clear itself--if it's an air intrusion or contamination problem.

Easy there. Even if they did not cause the problem, they will diagnose it; and fix it; or turn the gas off and hang a red tag.

And it really depends on your locality. In our area if it is in the house, the gas company will not fix it. If they diagnose it to be a safety danger, they will just turn off the gas and walk away until such time that it is fixed and has been inspected by a city inspector.

As for contamination, depends on what was broken loose, but pipe scale, pipe sealant, dirt, could all be introduced to the system in the process of replacing a meter or regulator...

Any of what you have mentioned could cause the pressure to drop!!! Yours was a good post!!

Thanks Andy!

Actually, based on the new system, it was an almost good post!!

I answered you so this has nothing to do with that except, I had the ditto similar problem when i visited my son in NY last January 07. The A/C gas pilot's go off and since he bought the house in the summer this was his first experience in winter. The labor charges gives you a heart attack. My wife said you an ex-honeyweller (started your first day with gas thermostats) do you think they know more than you ?

So when I checked, I found out that the thermocouple tip was a bit away from the pilot burner deflector resulting in the thermocouple not in direct pilot flame. I bent the deflector such that the gap between became less and the thermocouple was directly on the pilot flame. Cleaned the tip with wire brush and the problem was solved .This Jan it is still operating and no complain.

Remember the principle -

There is a pilot- stat inside (like a battery cell) which presses down ( when you press the knob ) on the end stub of the thermocouple wire and you hold it for 1 minute. The wire thermocouple made of 2 dissimilar metals and joined at tip internally. The tip gets heated when you light the match stick and the dissimilar metal of the thermocouple expands and contracts creating a millivolt required to magnetize the end of the thermocouple to the pilot- stat. Unless the right millivolt current is generated the pilot -stat does not hold.( when they say you hold it for 1 minute is actually they do not want to take you in the above engineering but, just to ensure that the thermocouple gets heated to generate the right millivolt current to hold the pilot stat and stable the pilot burner for the main burner to come on manually/automatically)

When the thermocouple tip gets dirty/ deflected/ pilot burner tip clogged/ low gas pressure etc., the current to hold the pilot-stat down drops and as a safety this shuts off the system. This is exactly like a mini burner control flame safeguard system to shutoff if the pilot is not stable. The thing to wonder is that even on a mechanical 'water heater thermostat" they have a built in ECO switch (electronic cut off switch - you see wires running back the thermostat's sensor behind) .For safety reason if the water temperature goes above 180F the ECO shuts off the entire pilot & main burner.

This is when you sometimes come home to realize that your water heater burner is completely off and you restart the cycle and it works perfectly. That was the ECO friend of yours looking after when you were not there.

Thank Honeywell who designed these then in maybe early 60's.

I did postmortem in early 80's to learn the theory of operation since there are Gas heaters for winters and lots of death during sleep enhaleing gas during sleep with the pilot going off (both pilot & main are direct with needle valve in these type of gas room heaters).

In Pakistan a Gas room heater manufacturer wanted a safety system. So I stripped opened a thermostat, invented & built him a similar Fsg system with the pilot-stat in a vertical cylinder sleeve with knob to press down & pilot burner + thermocouple. I believe he was the only guy selling SAFE Gas room heaters but people wouldn't pay extra and finally he switched over to the conventionally killing-gas-room heaters with instruction "keep one window open" for vent.

Call the heating guy.