An infamous Red Green saying and I nailed the handy part today.
Rewind to 4-something this morning and I'm told there's no hot water. Get up early and start looking at the problem - no pilot light. Did the whole reset procedure several times and got it going on voila, the burner kicked in and away we go or so I thought.
10 minutes later and heater is dead again, could get the pilot light started by it wouldn't stay lit. Thermocouple seemed like the obvious trouble point so I removed the old one and headed down to Home Depot to get a new one.
Get back home, install the new thermocouple a.d port stays lit - I figured I was home free. Then I moved the switch to the on position and the burner kicks in - hooray or so I thought. About 20 seconds later, both the burner and pilot snuff out.
So what now removed the burner assembly, all is good there. Put things back together and same situation. Now I know it's not the thermocouple and it's not the has control assembly and logic told me that there was a lack of fresh air. Took things apart, checked the flue and venting as well as the chimney and all is good. Did notice some accumulated dust bunnies on the fresh air vents so vacuumed them clean.
Put things back together and still the same problem. So more reading and I discover there's a thermal reactive device that is similar to a fuseable link in that it will break if it detects a flammable vapour instance and shuts of all fresh air supply. Take things apart again and sure enough mine is kaput. By now my reading has revealed that you should regularly take out the burner assembly and vacuum out the bottom of the combustion chamber as soon and stuff can accumulate over time on the porous plate below the burner which will restrict fresh air flow and eventually blow the safety device.
So now to get the TRD unit, called GE and they could send one out but it would take a couple of days and that I would also have a tech install it plus also have the tech check everything I had already done plus have my natural gas pressure checked. 80 some bucks for the part as well. Well after I did a rough figure of how much all this service was going to cost me plus 2 days minimum no hot water started making a new tank look very attractive.
But I started calling around and after 6 redirects I got ahold of Amco. They did not know of the part but asked me to bring it down. Got there and there's nothing in their databases. They called GE, got a part number and came out of the back with a very dusty box with my new part in it.
Go home, put the new TRD in, get things together and I now have a fully functional water heater
A $34 part sourced locally that was the solution but it sounds like the solution most often suggested by the service companies is a new water heater.
Interestingly enough, it took me longer to fix the water than it did for me to install it 11 years ago.