lesson learned

Its been about two weeks in our new place and things are slowly coming together. But, we learned an important lesson the other day. Our dryer kept tripping the breaker for some reason so I pulled the plug and noticed it was warm and melted around one of the prongs. Figuring that probably wasnt good and whats causing the breaker to trip I removed the old cord, proceeding to lose one of the screw down the back of the dryer. I searched everywhere and I couldnt see or hear it moving around so we headed off to Lowes and bought a replacement cord. Lowes, its hard to leave its like being a kid in a candy store. After drooling over everything I wanted I managed to get out the door and replaced the cord, still missing one of the screw to attach the hot lead I searched and searched to no avail. I looked through all of my toolboxes and junk drawer for a replacement and of course couldnt find one that fit.

Just as I was about to give up and drive back to Lowes for a damn screw I tipped the dryer one last time and teh screw came rolling along the inside of the dryer. Success! the dryer worked ....

For about 5 minutes when it tripped the breaker and gena said a spark came out of the outlet. not being one to mess with home electricity and after several warning from family members about burning the house down I had gena call the home warranty company and they sent an electrician. She called me at work and said that the outlet was the problem and it looked like we had a fire in it. He replaced the outlet and checked the other outlets in the house warning us that we have old style outlets that dont meet new fire codes and we should replace them because they are a fire hazard. he also said "youre lucky you didnt burn the house down with that dryer!"

Lesson of the week, when something, especially a dryer on a 220 line trips the breaker, dont pass it off and just reset the breaker without having the problem checked out.