I wasn't sure if I was going to post this or not but I guess it's a good warning to anyone else to not do what I did.

Monday after picking up Kaleb from school I needed to go to one of our side properties to deliver a notice to someone. In another unit the pilot light on the water heater was out and so I thought I might as well go light it for them so they don't have to wait until tomorrow. In the last 7 years I've probably lit 100+ pilot lights on furnaces and water heaters so it wasn't a big deal, or so I thought.

After getting the pilot to light it went out so I turned the dial back to pilot, held down the button and this time thought I would get close so I could watch the pilot and see if it went right out or stayed lit for a second. So with my face about 6 inches away from the opening I placed the lighter inside the water heater and pushed the button. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion of fire that burst in my face and around my head. I screamed and tried closing the door where the water heater was and used my arm to put out the fire in my hair. I was in shock and my face hurt really bad. So I'm crying and I don't know what to do. I ask the resident if I can use his phone but he didn't understand what I was saying. After a few phone calls I left the residents place and drove back to the apartments. The boys were in the car since I was only going to be 1 minute and Ashton was asleep so when I got in the car crying Kaleb didn't know what to think. I told him that fire had burned my hair and face and he said in the most sincere voice, "Mom, I'm glad you didn't die because I really like you." If I wasn't already crying I would have been after that. I called Matt when I got back to the office and Matt left work and I headed home to figure out what I needed to do.

For how scary it was and how much pain I was in I'm very blessed that as of today you wouldn't know I went through something like that. Overall I lost about 1/3 of my hair which was shocking to watch Matt pull the big sections of hair out. Although since it was kind of all over my head it's not really noticeable. (To someone else that is.) My eyebrows were burned off so it looks like I shaved them and they're growing back in, just short stubble. And my eyelashes have always been pretty short and now they're just really short. I'm very lucky my skin isn't burned as in blistering, etc. My eyelids are still tender and they were pretty swollen the first night and next day and there are a couple of tender spots of skin around my eyes but for what I went through I consider myself lucky and blessed.

Now for the warning: (I'm in no way an expert and this is just from my understanding and what I've been told and learned over the years.) I know most people won't know what I'm talking about so I'll try to not be confusing but when you light a pilot light on a furnace you hold down a button to let a little gas out so it will light and then when you turn it to 'on' if the pilot is lit more gas comes out to run the furnace. If the pilot goes out the thermocouple shuts off the gas supply if there isn't a flame. So typically if the pilot doesn't light the first time you try again because there might not have been enough gas, etc. On water heaters, this is the part I didn't know, if it's hot the thermocouple still lets gas out and doesn't shut off for 30 seconds to a minute after. So when I turned the knob from 'pilot', where a little gas was coming out, then to 'on' it let out a lot of gas even though the pilot had gone out. So then I turned it back to 'pilot' (little gas flow) to light it but I was unaware I had just filled up the whole chamber with gas and that's why there was the explosion when I lit the lighter. So if you ever light a water heater pilot light you need to wait 5+ minutes after each try so that any gas will vent out and make sure you don't smell ANY gas before trying again.

I don't think I'll be able to light a pilot on a water heater ever again and even thinking about water heaters at this point makes me anxious. I'll never forget the sight of fire all around my face and the feeling of the intense heat on my eyes but I'm grateful because it could have been much worse.

I know that was a depressing post so for something I found that I thought was pretty cool National Geographic made an Up! inspired house. Here's a LINK to the story.