calimac

First, for convenience of reference, I'll repeat the original post.

We keep our thermostat turned pretty low, mostly to save money. I'm a warmblooded creature and don't much mind the cold, and B. keeps bundled up. Anyway, with her current overloaded work schedule, if she's not at work she's in bed asleep, under many layers of covers.

Consequently it was not until yesterday that we discovered that, sometime in the last several weeks since we last turned it up for visitors, our furnace has gone out. It's never done that before.

So, light it up again. This is, unfortunately, not that easy. I lit the furnace in our previous home every year - we turned that one off for summer - but this one I've never touched for that, and it is not constructed like any furnace I understand. (It's a "Rheem Heating Center Gas Fired Forced Air Furnace" with "Robertshaw 24 volt (7000 BER) Gas Valves.")

There's a brass plate, not signed by Sir Francis Drake but with instructions for lighting the furnace, but even less than Drake's plate, I cannot make any sense out of it at all. Start with the first instruction, which says to be sure the "main gas valve" and "pilot cock" are off. That's a problem because I can only find one of these, and I'm not sure which one it is, and if the position I found it in is "on" (I presume: there's no obvious little arrow pointing to the valve), then it doesn't turn off, but only as far as "pilot." So I'm lost already.

Later on the instructions refer to the "gas cock dial." I don't know if that's the same as one of the previous two, and if so which one, or if it's a third control device that I also can't find.

Nor do I know where the actual pilot to light is. I told you, this is a very non-standard-looking furnace.

Naturally I tried googling, but with no result. I found the manufacturer website, but I can't phone them on a holiday weekend, and the only thing the website does is sell products. No web advice page I could find deals with this particular model; they just have general furnace-lighting instructions, and they say, for any help beyond that, don't risk blowing yourself up, get a repairman.

So I phoned a well-regarded local heating service, and they said, sure, they'd come out and do it, but they charge $170/hour. Now I'm trying to figure out who else would do it - I called a reliable handyman service, but they haven't called me back, maybe again because of the weekend.

Now, here are the pictures.

Lastly, here are the lighting instructions. (I tried photographing them, but it did not come out readable.)

Lighting Instructions
Robertshaw 24 Volt (7000 BER) Gas Valves
To start furnace
Caution - be sure that manual main gas valve and pilot cock have been "off" at least five minutes.
Set room thermostat to lowest setting.
Turn Gas Cock Dial to the "PILOT" position.
Depress and hold gas cock dial while lighting pilot burner. Allow pilot to burn approximately one-half minute before releasing Gas Cock Dial. If pilot does not remain lighted, repeat operation allowing longer period before releasing Gas Cock Dial. (Adjust pilot if necessary.)
Turn Gas Cock Dial to "On" Position.
Replace all access doors.
Set thermostat to a point above room temperature to light main burners. After main burners are lighted, set thermostat to desired temperatures.
To shut down furnace: Depress and turn Gas Cock Dial to "OFF" position.

I should make clear that I have no trouble understanding these instructions at all. They make perfect sense. I just cannot relate them to the equipment that I see before me. If the Gas Cock Dial is the white plastic dial just in front of the instructions in the third picture above, which has labels of OFF, PILOT, and ON on it, then I cannot turn it to OFF even by depressing it. And where are the main gas valve and pilot cock mentioned in step 1? Is one of them the same thing as the Gas Cock Dial, and, even if so, what's the other one? Also, where is the pilot burner? I am at a loss.