The hubby and I had been smelling a faint burning plastic smell periodically in the kitchen for several days but couldn’t track it down. We had checked every crock pot, coffee maker, and blender and found nothing amiss.Then our brand new refrigerator – you will remember from an earlier post- quit working. It just went dead. We moved it out from the wall to examine it further and found …
THIS
and THIS.
Umm – yeah- that’s a problem.
The outlet for the fridge – one of the few on a dedicated circuit- was in a box a few inches off the ground not attached to the floor or the wall. The previous owner – not wanting to spend the money on the 12 inches of extra wire to run it up wall where it could be recessed and mounted properly had left the box open a few inches off the floor where it had collected dust and arced causing the plug of the fridge to burn as well as the outlet. The combination of metal box and plaster walls saved us but I was not thrilled that for the savings on a few bucks of copper wire my family was put in danger. We installed new wire, a new box- installed correctly, and a new plug for the fridge- after I thoroughly cussed out the dead guy ending with something like “You stupid cheap @#$%-of course you don’t care that you nearly burned down this house and my family in it all for 12 inches of wire -because you are DEAD!!” Yeah I know it is silly to yell at dead people but it makes me feel better.
2 comments:
Ohh, Pam, honey, so glad it didn't go up in fire and you are all ok. Swearing at dead people, but ok! I guess that after that you went around the house tracking down all the electricity outlets while cursing under your breath! Ahh well, I live in an old house as well and I love it and I'd rather live in this house than in any modern state of the art place!
We love our old house as well and don't plan to trade it in but it doesn't stop me from getting really mad at the previous owner- who passed away before I bought it- who did some really ridiculous things to save a few dollars. Okay I am done venting now :-) Well at least until the next crazy thing.
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