Fun with Appliances
As some of you may or may not know, Clint and I have spent the last year or so hand spinning our washing machine, meaning that when it was time for the spin one of use would need to be on hand to just give it a little help getting started. Of course we recognized the inconvenience of it, and the absurdity of not getting it fixed for so long, but as we contemplated the extra loads of laundry we’ll have in about 6 short months, and the ease with which it could potentially be remedied, we finally put the call into sears and had the repairman out. about 3 minutes later and $60 poorer we found out that fixing it would cost in the neighborhood of $500 dollars- conveniently about the same cost of buying a new one. As I slid the dryer back into place and plugged it in, I heard a lovely popping sound that I realized with a sinking feeling meant the dryer probably wouldn’t turn on. I exhausted my knowledge on how to fix it (meaning I flipped the circuit breaker) but to no avail. At this point, wildly frustrated that the dryer choose to break a mere minutes after the repairperson left, and hesitant to spend another $60 to hear the dryer was forever broken, I decided to see what I could do about any of it. I got as far as disassembling the washing machine before I realized with the cost of parts and my risk of further breaking something, it just wasn’t worth it.
It’s been a week and we haven’t gotten around to replacing either yet- we looked, but we were paralyzed in indecision and decided we first needed to do a bit of investigation. In the meantime, yesterday I decided to run a few loads of laundry and again tried to plug in the dryer (hoping for a miracle). Instead we got a shower of sparks and a burnt plug. Conveniently we had an appliance repair person out this morning, which leads us to an different story entirely.
This one starts with our carbon monoxide detector falling down the stairs, and ending up in pieces on our landing on Monday. Over dinner I put it back together, where it promptly began going off. While the instructions on the back warned us to immediately vacate the house and call 911 we were less concerned, given its recent tumble and high likelihood of malfunctioning. After a couple of experiments however of moving it from room to room where it wouldn’t go off, we decided we might have an issue after all, and put a call into our gas line warranty company. This was one of those situations where if they send someone out and there’s nothing wrong, just a malfunctioning detector, we get charged- BUT if they find something wrong, it’s free. This goes down as one of the first and only times we’re praying something is wrong with the house. They promptly sent a heating and cooling person who waved his detector wand around, and noticed a loose exhaust pipe on the furnace and a slightly elevated reading around the stove. After calling for a smaller person since it required shimmying on one’s belly to reach the pipe, they replaced the entire exhaust, free of charge. My next move was to check out the stove. I called and got the same response- if there’s nothing wrong it’s money out of our pocket. Torn between not wanting to spend the money, but wanting to make sure the stove was safe (and secretly hoping for a new, free one) we put in the request and out they came this morning. Naturally, nothing was wrong (costing us $80) but I did get to pick his brain about the dryer. Turns out either the dryer cord or the outlet box is shorting, which should be easy to determine by opening them both up and seeing which one is burnt. Supposedly a cord replacement is an easy thing, but it is nonetheless one more thing. We’re a bit overwhelmed at this point, both by the tasks at hand and the mounting pile of laundry, but I’m not going to lie- the thought of a washer running an entire cycle by itself is exciting. All in all, although it’s been a lot of repair people, we at least know our furnace, water heater and stove are safe (which you would never know by looking at them), and we’re about to have a washer (and maybe a dryer) that should be trouble free well into the future. I suppose it's all better it happen now too, while we actually have the time (relatively) to address these things.
It’s been a week and we haven’t gotten around to replacing either yet- we looked, but we were paralyzed in indecision and decided we first needed to do a bit of investigation. In the meantime, yesterday I decided to run a few loads of laundry and again tried to plug in the dryer (hoping for a miracle). Instead we got a shower of sparks and a burnt plug. Conveniently we had an appliance repair person out this morning, which leads us to an different story entirely.
This one starts with our carbon monoxide detector falling down the stairs, and ending up in pieces on our landing on Monday. Over dinner I put it back together, where it promptly began going off. While the instructions on the back warned us to immediately vacate the house and call 911 we were less concerned, given its recent tumble and high likelihood of malfunctioning. After a couple of experiments however of moving it from room to room where it wouldn’t go off, we decided we might have an issue after all, and put a call into our gas line warranty company. This was one of those situations where if they send someone out and there’s nothing wrong, just a malfunctioning detector, we get charged- BUT if they find something wrong, it’s free. This goes down as one of the first and only times we’re praying something is wrong with the house. They promptly sent a heating and cooling person who waved his detector wand around, and noticed a loose exhaust pipe on the furnace and a slightly elevated reading around the stove. After calling for a smaller person since it required shimmying on one’s belly to reach the pipe, they replaced the entire exhaust, free of charge. My next move was to check out the stove. I called and got the same response- if there’s nothing wrong it’s money out of our pocket. Torn between not wanting to spend the money, but wanting to make sure the stove was safe (and secretly hoping for a new, free one) we put in the request and out they came this morning. Naturally, nothing was wrong (costing us $80) but I did get to pick his brain about the dryer. Turns out either the dryer cord or the outlet box is shorting, which should be easy to determine by opening them both up and seeing which one is burnt. Supposedly a cord replacement is an easy thing, but it is nonetheless one more thing. We’re a bit overwhelmed at this point, both by the tasks at hand and the mounting pile of laundry, but I’m not going to lie- the thought of a washer running an entire cycle by itself is exciting. All in all, although it’s been a lot of repair people, we at least know our furnace, water heater and stove are safe (which you would never know by looking at them), and we’re about to have a washer (and maybe a dryer) that should be trouble free well into the future. I suppose it's all better it happen now too, while we actually have the time (relatively) to address these things.
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