A couple of months ago my son Mikey was heating up a pot of water on the stove and he told me that it sparked a little. I took a look and everything seemed okay, all lights and elements working, and I’m thinking that the stove is about 12 years old, so I am making the assumption that a sprinkle of pepper was on the element.
Next day, this time Mikey is more concerned and telling me about a big zap and spark when the frying pan touched the kettle. I look and am horrified to see that there is a hole, a melted-through hole, similar to a welding torch cut, in the side of the kettle! The current left the frying pan and entered the kettle when they touched.
He says he is going to turn the burner off and I yell NO, find the breaker box and disconnect the power to the stove. Double checking this by seeing that the clock is off.
cheap stoves like this can short circulate and electrocute!
I contacted the manager, who at first wasn’t concerned until I showed him my kettle with the welding-torch-like cut in the side of it, and that the cast iron fry pan has a piece of aluminum kettle fused on it. He was shocked, and took it a little more serious.
He took the kettle, gave me the stove from the office, showed kettle to management, who was equally shocked, and they have replaced every single stove in this place! That’s 27 stoves! Like I mentioned before, I live in a government housing unit, and so glad that they believe in having a safe place for families, so they dug into their emergency fund and replaced every stove before some adult or child got electrocuted.
if you are lucky, the 220 volts from a stove will do this and not kill you.
The whole point of this story, is that these new stoves do not hold up like the quality built stoves our parents had. These stoves are apparently to be considered non-fixable and disposable with a life of only 10 years. And because these newer stoves are cheap, they do not fall apart like the older models.
The older models would just not have worked, or the element would have half-worked with hot and cold spots.
How Mikey did not get a serious shock is a mystery to me and I am so grateful he is not harmed. So beware of your element sparking, it isn’t pepper.
Article on other ways you can get shocked at home.
#militantsinglemom, #singlemoms, #electrocution, #kidshomesafety