Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Trouble in Paradise

I decided to do laundry last night. Big mistake. The electrical system of the house seems to have a big grudge against the washing machine, and the circuit-breaker kept breaking. Then it required a ten-minute rest before I could reset it. The next-door neighbor works for the Electric Company (and, according to unreliable nine-year-old gossip, gets unlimited free electricity as an employment benefit), but hasn't yet found time to stop by. Meanwhile, lurching through three loads of laundry has taken about 24 hours.

AND, something about the sink drain is very sick. The dishwasher is not hooked up, so I wash the dishes by hand (how primitive!) But the water goes down the drain and seems to flood under the sink.

Arrrggggh!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's any comfort, we have a huge gaping hole in our bathroom floor and no hot water for the foreseeable future, because all our pipes are rotted through, and they're going to have to re-do all our "tsaneret". It looks like we're headed for a week or two of living in a construction site, and showering at friends'. So things could be worse :)

Anonymous said...

"The electrical system of the house seems to have a big grudge against the washing machine, and the circuit-breaker kept breaking."

Does it always trip in the same part of the wash cycle? Try a using an alternative setting that uses less power. For example the Perminant press setting may have a slower spin rate. Also, running the washer on the gentle/delicate cycle if it has one, may use less power and not trip the circut breaker.

Are the washer and dryer on the same circut? If so don't run the washer and dryer at the same time.

Does anything else stop working when the washer's circut breaker goes off? If so make sure those are turned off when you use the washer so there is less power being used on that circut.



"The dishwasher is not hooked up"

There is probably a pipe that is supposed to go from the dishwasher to the drain under the sink. You might try to find something (like a rag) to stick in the connector coming off the sink drain to plug it up. Just don't push it all the way in and clog the drain.

SavtaDotty said...

Tif - I just hope it's only a week or two. Once these people move in and make things worse "temporarily," they often rush off for various emergencies and you think the job will never get finished. Just warning you, but you're welcome to shower at my house, starting Thursday. When you see how weak my water pressure is, you'll realize that it's not such a generous offer!

Anonymous - I think I'll wait for the man of the house to try all these things. Meanwhile we've isolated the problem to one circuit, and at least it's not the one operating the refrigerator or the lights or the computer!