I borrowed some space heaters from a friend until mine arrives. The other night after the meeting I plugged one into the same surge protector my computer is on, and a few minutes later blew the circuit. No big surprise, but the moment it happened I heard a noise upstairs and realized that they must have lights on the same circuit. I went to the breaker box and everything looked on. I made sure to push every switch all the way to the on position, but still no power. I concluded there must be another box upstairs and knocked on their door. My landlord Steve threw on some slippers and came down and edumacated me on how the box works. The switch that felt a little loose was the one that blew, and you just have to turn it all the way off and then back on. All better.
The reason I bring this up in the first place is because I was ashamed to have him see how messy I've let the place get. I had laundry all over the sofa, dishes all over the kitchen, and shoes and papers all over the floor. My old roommate suffered the same disease but at least we both had enough conscience to keep the primary messes to our respective rooms and maintain at least a semblance of presentableness in the living room. Oh well. I'm just glad it was the easy-going Steve and not his high-strung wife. Guess I'll clean up now, or sometime soon.
Posted by dan at February 14, 2004 02:59 PM | TrackBackDude, that is way too funny.. You have a lot of humility to post that one..
Although growing up as a hick in MT I was well aware of how to reset a breaker, I did do something similar a while back.
I woke up to cold water in the shower. Realizing that it was probably the water heaters power that had gone out, I was going to go check my breakers.
But I called the Landlord first since I thought I must use the same water heater as the downstairs tenants. They had just moved out, so I thought: " They must have shut off their power, therefore killing power to the hot water heater I share". The landlord swung by to check it out, said the breakers where fine and called the plumber.
The plumber calls me to let me know my breaker was flipped. Nice, well I learned my lesson, don't take anyone’s word for it. Check them yourself. Turns out I have my own hot water heater on my very own breaker, that is at the base of the stairs to my apt.
Apparently there are different kinds of switches. In the house I grew up in, we occasionally tripped the breakers, but when I went down to look at the box, the one that tripped was clearly in the off position. I didn't know they made them another way. Eh. Live and learn. As your experience shows, if you want something done right, you'll just have to ... first do it wrong at least once.
Posted by: dan at February 17, 2004 08:07 AMI too have the breakers that remain in the 'on' position. This has befuddled the landlords, in whose section of the house the circuit breakers are in. I've made many trips to said location to fix and remind them that the 'spoungy' switches need to be flipped. Doesn't take long tho, since my washer, dryer, oven, microwave, and rest of my apt share a measly 6 switches. I think my water heater and furnace are in there somewhere too.
Word about water, ours (as you may have noticed from my blog) is 2 floors down and on the other side of the house. So delivering that freshly boiled water takes about 2 minutes. But then you only have about 14-15 minutes of said boiling hot water. And a 30 minute wait for the recharge. Two showers in the morning can be difficult. And forget about showering after laundry.
But it works. Our landlord is an elder, so that works.
Posted by: M Kenyon at February 18, 2004 08:25 AM