Hello,

in this cold Boston winter our water heater pilot light keeps going out. The HomeServ "repair man" came to look and said the thermocouple is fine and the issue is the low gas pressure from it being so cold and so many people using gas.

The problem is, the pilot is going out on just this one water heater (the other duplex unit heater is fine, as are, it seems, the two heat boilers) quite often and leaves us with cold water in the morning.

Is there anything that can be done to help prevent the pilot from going out?

if his diagnosis is correct, the way to help the problem is to increase the size of the gas pipe in the cellar.

The first thing to do it check the "dynamic" gas pressure to be sure that is REALLY the problem, which is not likely. THe gas mains run at several, in fact MANY, psi, while your system is at about 1/2 psi and it would be very UNLIKELY that the mains would ever drop below that level, which would have to happen for his diagnosis to be correct.

once again terminology comes into play here.
this is a common problem with natural gas in the wintertime.
it is not the 'pressure' that is the problem, it is the volume.
when it is cold outside and everyones heat is cranking, the gas company can not supply enough gas to keep everything burning full tilt.
their answer is to increase the size of your piping inside your house.
the larger main (at least one inch sometimes 1 1/4 or 1 1/2) will act as a buffer so the appliance will not draw down all the gas so quickly. kinda like having a water storage tank inside a house with very little pressure.
one of my customers live in the last house on a long dead end street. when the temperatures were very cold his boiler flame would not raise the water temperature above 140 deg. he had 1 inch main inside. the main was increase to 1 1/2 inch and he has much better heat now.
the reality is that the gas company can not keep up in some areas.

Agree, Packy. I just read this article about heating in New England:
[www.vocativ.com]

There's plenty of gas available but demand is causing some bottlenecks.

The Good news for you guys, fuel oil costs have been dropping. Now if they could only find your driveway and filler pipe!

Within the last week I read that they were having problems up there, exactly as you're describing packy.