Pilot light gas usage

[Daox]

I've been digging through sites lately for more ideas on conservation and I came across a builditsolar page on gas usage of pilot lights. I had no idea that my pilot light for my water heater could be burning 5-12 therms per month! My summer usage for gas (which would be all water heating except for some stove top use) is only around 14 therms. That means likely a huge bulk of that is the pilot light just burning away.

Apparently, a pilot light burning that much gas puts off a fair amount of heat too:

How much water should you be able to heat with just a pilot light?

If you take 6 therms per month as the an average pilot light energy use:


Energy per day = (6 therms/mo)(100,000 BTU/therm)(1 mo/30 days) = 20,000 BTU/day


20,000 BTU per day is enough to heat about 30 gallons of water from 60F to 120F assuming 75% efficiency **

The page also has a couple links on it which tell of people using only pilot lights to heat their water, one of which goes back to a thread on ecomodder, our car oriented sister site.

Has anyone else tried or thought about this? I'd think you could make some sort of automatic flue damper and have the best of both worlds. If my summer usage is only 14 therms, theres a good chance I can get away with pilot light only heating, at least in summer.