A very, very minor kitchen fire

[eve_prime]

This evening I left J's house for an hour so he could run his dishwasher, which is much too loud from my perspective, although he doesn't mind it. I sat on the couch and started a library book that's due in a week, and Jonathan began to smell smoke. I could smell it too, but from my perspective it was like things often are in the fall or winter, when people start burning their wood-fired stoves because it's cold outside, and then a bit of smoke gets in his house when I open the door. It had been cold here last night, so I figured people were getting ahead of it tonight with their stoves. So I was tuning it out. The smell got worse, though, and J got up to investigate. He thought the smell was stronger in the kitchen, and we started to wonder if his dishwasher was on fire! My old one had died in a burst of electrical sparks, and he said his parents had had a dishwasher fire too, so we were concerned. We went in, and he opened it up, and... it turns out his dishwasher has the heating coils for the "dry" cycle at the bottom of the main unit, right there in the open, and a wooden spoon had fallen onto it and was blackened in two locations. Whew!

Comments

[heleninwales]

Eek! I'm glad it was no worse.

[eve_prime]

It turned out to be trivial, with an amusing looking spoon as a result. Such a relief.

[kaishin108]

Oh no, that is scary and so happy he noticed the smell was from the kitchen, yikes! I detest loud dishwashers, I am glad ours is quiet. But our noisy washing machine lives in our hall, ugh.

[eve_prime]

Yes, I'm all ready to shop for a new dishwasher for him, although it turns out he doesn't need it. Mine is quiet enough that I can watch tv with it running, and now we also know that the heating element could be exposed like that, which we really don't want.

[claidheamhmor]

What on earth? I have never heard of that happening!!

[eve_prime]

I had never realized there were dishwashers that had their heating element right out in the open like that, as if it were an oven.

[claidheamhmor]

That's actually quite alarming.

[eve_prime]

Yeah - I wonder if it's the original dishwasher for the house (from 1993) and I hope the codes have changed since then.