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fire

December 17th, 2011 at 09:14 pm

Last night I turned my oven on to fix a mushroom pizza. The heating element started sparking and caught on fire. I tried to put it out with water, but the spark just moved along the coil and wouldn't go out. It finally burned thru the element in 2 places. Anyways, I called the fire department, but the fire went out right before they got there, about 5 min. It was ridiculous. First came a square truck, then 2 fire trucks and an ambulance. I know they don't know ahead of time what kind of force they will need, but it seemed like overkill.

They were really nice, but basically the fire was over by then. They checked the wall and stove and made sure it was all cool and left within 10 minutes.

After they left I went online and started researching new stoves. I found what I wanted at Home Depot, Lowe's and Sears. Sears had the best price, but Home Depot has their price match policy + 10% lower and they had free delivery and haul away. So I thought I had done pretty well at $450. I called my dad and asked if he would go with me because he's the big negotiator. He came over this morning and looked at the stove and told me he could just replace the heating element in the oven, if I wanted to do that, or I could buy the new stove if I wanted to. I didn't know you could do that, he said he's done it several times on stoves in rentals he owns and did it 3 times for my grandparents. Cool! I decided to go that route. We had to drive into the next town to get the replacement element and it cost $75 after taxes, but that's a lot better than $450.

It took him about 20 minutes to replace it and it seems to work fine. I haven't actually cooked anything yet. I took him to Village Inn for lunch as a thanks. Spent $19.10

I finished reading my book Alector's Choice by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Sci/Fi - very good.

4 Responses to “fire”

  1. DeniseNTexas Says:
    1324162496

    How scary! I'm glad you got the fire out, even if it was just before the fire dept. arrived. I've had stoves need new heating elements and hopefully yours will work just fine. Smile

  2. snafu Says:
    1324173733

    I suggest you do a web search for your particular brand and model to see if there has been a safety recall.

    Is it possible there was a dot of residual grease on the oven element? Should this ever occur again, don't open the oven door as it feeds oxygen to help fire. Turn off the 220V breaker [ovens, dryer use different breaker].

  3. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1324182741

    I'm sorry to hear this happened. You might want to keep a container of baking soda next to your oven - it works much better than water for putting out electrical/grease fires.

  4. LuckyRobin Says:
    1324237784

    A bit scary, but I'm glad it all turned out okay. And $75 to replace the element when you thought you'd have to spend so much more is a wonderful surprise.

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