Oct

4

Electricity is not my friend

October 4, 2003 |

It is a horrible, rainy Saturday and the electrician has already been here twice today. I called him to come over yesterday because we had some lights that were flickering. He said, after an hour of checking, that he couldn’t find anything wrong in the house and to have the power company come out and check the pole on top of our house and the pole that our house connects to. They did that and nothing.

Fade to 8pm last night and I notice a funny smell. Seems to be coming from the basement. Go down there and I hear sizzling and popping coming from the breaker box. Combine that with a burning plastic smell and I am scared. I go to figure out which breaker is making the noise and the entire circuit panel is hot. By trial and error I find the circuit that was causing the trouble and turn it off. It is the main circuit for the basement. The basement where my freezer is.

Call the electrician he says he will be right over Saturday morning to take a look as long as the panel is cooling off (which it is). Jeff and I move the super colossal heavy freezer upstairs so we don’t lose all the food I bought YESTERDAY (of course). I made Nick sleep upstairs last night even though his bedroom is downstairs. I am so scared of fire and don’t want anything to happen to him.

Go to Saturday morning. Jeff is long gone as this is opening weekend of bow hunting season. I will not see him again until the middle of December. LOL The electrican shows up at 8am (!!!). I fly out of bed, I sleep in on the weekends, throw on some clothes and greet him. He replaces 5 bad circuits, I give him another check (he didn’t charge me labor this time) and he is on his way. I go downstairs to pop in my exercise tape about an hour later and guess what I hear???? Pop, sizzle and I smell that burning plastic smell again!!! Call him back and say “Hi remember me?” LOL So he asks me if we will be okay for an hour or so, I say yes and he comes back in an hour. Replaces 3 more breakers and says “You know you’ll probably have to replace the entire panel before too long at this rate.” And my reply is “How much?” And he says “$600 to $1000 depending on how long it takes.” So I say “Well let’s see if we can get through Christmas and we’ll go from there.”

Some days I really hate my house :(

Until next time…


Comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Lori on October 4, 2003 7:03 pm

    Oh no Julie!! I am so sorry you are having such a costly thing at your house. It is hard keeping up with a house sometimes!! I know whow you feel!! Sometimes I wish we rented…LOL!!
    I am glad nothing caught on fire or anything!! ((BIG HUGS))!!

  2. Joan on October 7, 2003 6:22 pm

    How do you ever manage to move the heavy freezer? We had to replace our entire panel two years ago..big bucks! Hope you have a better week.

  3. Andrea on October 8, 2003 10:03 am

    OH MY HECK! I would have been totally freaking out if my control panel was doing that!

    When our electricity goes out, one of our outlets makes a weird buzzing sound - kinda like there’s a little bit of electricity running through it. I always freak out and go to the breaker and kill the power to the entire house. The thought of fire scares me to death!

    How did you get the freezer moved??

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