Dishwasher Caught Fire

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Evening Wash

I too tend to start the dishwasher and then retire to 'dreamland' but now am concerned that I should be 'up' while the dishes are being 'spit shined'. Perhaps there is a more appropriate TOD to run this very useful appliance.
 
ive heard of stoves catching on fire without even being on. happened to a woman i work with, the electronic controls caught fire when the stove hadnt even been used

as far a leaving things running when i leave........sometimes i look at it like, who the hell wants to be home if it catches fire? lol
 
appliance fires

I have to agree with Mr Sparkle...qualtity means nothing. Never had one of my babies catch fire, but just think about it for a moment. You would never, ever leave a 100W bulb burning in a closed wardrobe or clothes closet.
Yet we feel comfortable leaving 3250W heating coils merrily running away in an even smaller space while we sleep.
What, there are no clothes in the dishwasher?
Hmm, forgot that plastic doesn't burn.
Silly me.
Interesting side note. People who install smoke detecters over here in Germany are seen as being hysterical. My new place came with one installed by the builder. All my acquaintances saw it (it kind of did stick out) and said "ach ja, typisch amerikanisch". The German trains refuse to install them.
Not surprisingly, Germany has a much higher rate of smoke-inhalation related deaths than all the countries surrounding it...all of whom require smoke detecters.
Makes you wonder.
 
We beleive in preventative maintenance and pre-emptive strikes.

Scenario: on a train from Paris to Amsterdam. Beautiful girl in a red sleeveless dress with spaghetti straps. [Even I looked!] UNTIL she raised her arms to light a cigarette. Can you say overgrown jungle? Then she stuck the cancer stick in her mouth full of rotten teeth. *FAINT*

Culture and *norms* are a learned thing, I guess.

But to defend Germans, aren't structures there generally concrete and steel/rebar whereas we still have wood-frame construction?
 
Well, in defense of trusting an appliance, most light bulbs don't have safety devices that shut them off if the temperature gets too high. Most dishwashers (built since 1960, anyway) do have such devices on their heaters. Sure it's not foolproof, but then nothing really is, because fools are so ingenious.

Even if german homes were constructed of steel and concrete, there's still a lot to burn in a typical home besides the walls. Furniture, bedding, drapery, rugs, wooden floors, clothes, rafters, roofing, books, plastic electronic goodies, people.
 
they were, till I arrived

Germans were orderly and organized, until they made the mistake of letting me into the country.
Chaos �ber alles!
The trouble with smoke detectors being accepted here has its roots in several things.
First, they are seen as "amerikanisch". The German intellectual left resents the US tremendously. I can not count the times I have been talked down to and lectured in the last 20+ years (in bad English). There is a firm belief among many that all countries in the world have culture and tradition - just not the US.
Because the Americans are seen as the originators of these smoke detectection systems (they aren't) they are automatically bad.
Second, many of the first generation (some still do) used a miniscule amount of alpha-radiation to analyze the air-quality. Germans were up in arms about nuclear energy in those days (with good reason, I think) so anything "radioactive" was seen as dangerous.
Third - despite the severe damage done by tornados, high winds, hail and flooding here in Germany over the last several years there is still a firmly rooted belief that Americans only have "leicht-bau" homes - and German homes are massively built of stone and concrete. The truth is, as Rich said - who cares whether the walls don't burn - it is the toxic fumes from the content which are deadly.
I truly wish the Europeans would shake off some of their knee-jerk "if it is from the US it is bad" mentality. I also wish the US would acknowledge that their are other ways of doing things on this planet - and some of them might even be better.
But not much chance of that...60% of all Americans of European stock sind deutsches Blut... which brings us back to the bull-headed beginning of the topic...
Oh, yea - the girl with the teeth and the under-arm hair. Not all European women are that way, but the man-hating/castrating-women-are-only-free-when-men-are-subjugated- mentality is still to be found here. I never cease to be astonished at the total wimps who put up with their wives/girl friends treating them the way they do...and wonder what sort of woman would want that sort of man.
Me, I like a furry man who smells good. I do understand why a woman might not want to shave such sensitive areas...you ever really thought about what you have there, pressed against your throat every morning?
 
I had the fortune (or misfortune) of sharing a house with a Swiss-German man when I attended college several decades ago.

Overall he was pleasant to the point of boredom. But he had this thing about how anything American was automatically inferior to that which could be obtained in Switzerland. He would go into hysterics if we happened to be watching TV together. Not at any comedy, but at the commercials. Oh, they were so stupid, stupid Americans for allowing them, he's say. I found this extremely annoying because like most of us, I would go into a trance when the commercials came on, just waiting for them to end, not really paying attention to them. By drawing attention to them, and to himself, he was being very obnoxious.

Finally I got tired of listening to the "oh, it's so much better in Switzerland" prattle. He knew I was born in another state (Connecticut, to be exact). He hadn't been there. With the collusion of the third housemate (American as well), I started observing about just about anything that came up, that Oh, my, it was SOOOO much better in Connecticut. The look on his face, ("Uh-HUH!?") was priceless. He was not a stupid person (PhD in Physical Chemistry), but had limited social skills, but even he caught onto the satire, eventually, and his Swiss-is-better remarks slowly petered out.

This genious also used to lament about how awful American women were, and his inability to date any of them. He attributed this to his old world habits of treating them deferentially, such as holding open doors, etc., and that they were too uncouth to appreciate his gentility. Finally after hearing a lot of that stuff, I lost it and told him that I couldn't think of any American women who would want to go out with him, holding a door or not.

Overall, I did not get a postive opinon of the Swiss nation as a result of this 1 year experience. But I'm sure there are some nice ones, and they may even have smoke detectors.

Re: German homes built of stone and concrete. I just hope they never have a minor to major earthquake! California homes are deliberately built light, and of wood, so they can flex and sway with a quake, and not tear apart.

To be fair, though, as I'm sure you're aware, there is a LOT of ribbing of Germans in American (and English) comedy, and among friends. Witness Conan O'Brien's late night grouesque impression of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's thick Austrian accent. I'm sure most Germans are aware of this attitude and perhaps their haughty dismissal of anything American is some compensation. And not without any reason, because there is a tremendous amount of junk produced here, for the sake of planned obsolescence and profit before function. But the German's refusal to protect their lives with smoke detectors simply because they are perceived as being an American invention... that is like cutting of one's nose to spite one's face. Is there a German word for that, besides "Dumbkopfistch"?
 
you all are missing the point, its not the heating element that overheated and caught fire!

Its the wiring underneath that caught fire or shorted out.

Thats what GADGET GARY meant when he said

"Ultimately I determine the cause: one of the wires to the heating elements broke at the crimp connector (stress concentrator).... over the years the vibration led to the wire failure. Once the wire broke the current arced and caught the insulation on fire."

This is the same short out that happened on my Haier DW also.
 
Well, in my opinion, a wire that breaks at a crimp connector is the victim of shoddy engineering and/or manufacturing/assembly. We all know the quality problems Maytag has had in the past decade, so perhaps it shouldn't be a big surprise that one of their dishwashers should self-immolate. Perhaps this is a lesson - if you have a major appliance that you consider a "POS", then perhaps the safest plan to is get rid of it ASAP, out of the house, and either replace it with a quality unit, or do without.
 
sich ins eigene Fleisch schneiden

Rich, that is how you say it in German - tho' there are certainly somewhat, less jungendfreie, ways of saying it.
It is hard not to be critical when you switch cultures. Part of it is that one is, oneself, very unsettled.
Part of it is the tendency in Europe to be hyper-critical of everything American Why? Because!
I have often been told "aber, dieses wirst du sowieso nicht begreifen können" - you won't be able to understand this, anyway - because I grew up in the US.
Having said all this: Here in Germany (and, except for Poland) all of the European Union gay people can live their lives in peace. In many countries we can marry. Nobody cares one bit who you love.
The entirety of Wester Europe together does not manage in one year all the violent crime of some major American cities in one month, alone.
Christianity (outside of Poland) is defined by how one expresses their god's love and not by the US definition of hatred.
I could go on and on - certainly, under the current US administration the opinions have not exactly improved.
Ultimately, 99% of the problem is, quite simply, jealousy. The US is such a great, big, beautiful country with people who are entitled to pursue happiness. The German consitution places "human dignity" at the same level.
Not happiness.
This said - there is still no excuse for the fact that machinery which the US exports to the rest of the world is of much higher quality than what is sold domestically. That just plain sucks.
 
Panthera,

Thanks. What exactly would be the German word or phrase for "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face"? Is it "sich ins eigene Fleisch schneiden"? (You can tell I don't understand much German...).

Strictly speaking, the definition of "happiness" in the Declaration of Independence was not personal joy. Rather, at that time in that colonial British culture being rocked by the concepts of the "Enlightenment", "the pursuit of happiness" meant being free to contribute to the public good. Which in turn, I suppose, could eventually result in personal joy for the majority. It was probably a big departure from traditional British society, where only the upper crust and nobility had much say in how things were run. And, of course, the Declaration holds no legal status in our society - it is the Constitution and Common Law that defines our legal system (except in Louisiana where Napoleonic law has a strong influence). A lot of the sentiments in the Declaration made their way into the Constitution, but you won't find "happiness" anywhere in it.

I wasn't aware that our domestic manufacturers supplied products of superior quality for export. However I have heard for some time that various european manufacturers have supplied shoddier versions for export to America. Volvo in the 70's and 80's springs to mind. I recall being told that the Volvo's sold in Sweden were much better than the ones they exported to America. I guess our reputation for being a disposable society got around.
 
Hey Rich,

Yup - that's it "sich ins eigene fleisch schneiden" which means, verbatim: ones' self in the one's own skin to cut".
You get the point.
I am not so sure but what the founding fathers actually meant it just the way they said it; they were mostly deists and free-thinkers - to them the concept of happiness would probably only be possible if it originated at the individual level. Of course you are right - there is a big difference between the preamble to a non-binding document (for the US) and German law - largely written by the US government, by the way in 1948.
The original consitution, unmodified by the "bill of rights" and other amendments is a rather, hmm, well not exactly the most empowering of documents. With the bill of rights, it is really something special and wonderful.
The basic mentality, tho', remains the same: The US is predicated on the concept of people determining their own fate to their own advantage; the German constitution is more concerned with limiting the evil which men do to a minimum. Can't imagine why...the 1930's and 40's were rather dull and boring here im Vaterland...I mean, Germany. Unless you were Jewish, devout Christian (there are such things, not the hate-filled US kind), homosexual, romany (gypsy), and so on...
A-hem.
I have worked (translating) with scientists from a few US companies who have two sets of standards: domestic and EC. The EC standards are often higher. The same applies to stuff many car makers built in the 90's: Chrysler reworked every auto they exported individually.
There are more examples, but the one closest to my heart is country music. You would be surprised how many groups do their experimenting and trying out over hear and stick to the s.o.s. in their home market.
 
Well, Panthera, perhaps the meaning of "happiness" in the Declaration would be more accurately translated into today's language as "the pursuit of doing the right thing". If you read the rest of the piece, this makes some sense, as it contains a laundry list of grievances against what the founders saw as immoral, corrupt, unfair, and unethical treatment of the American Colonies by the British King George. It basically said, "The King had a chance to do the right thing; he blew it; now we are going to do it on our own". The colonials were tired of being treated like second class citizens; they wanted the right to do things right. Of course, they were not completely successful, as the tacit approval of slavery in the first constitution indicates, and the British Empire abolished it in its territories long before the Americans did.

In any case, the "pursuit of doing the right thing" is an individual pursuit, that just so happens to benefit everybody. It implies both domestic and public peace, tranquility, and justice.

For many children, the "pursuit of happiness" means the right to cut school and eat as much candy as one likes. Obviously, this was not what the founding fathers had in mind.
 
Here's a good summary of what I think is the best definition of "the pursuit of happiness", as Jefferson intended it:

"Did the "happiness" of the Declaration, then, simply mean personal pleasure in keeping with individual taste? In certain respects, yes--for, like Locke, Jefferson believed that happiness was ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. Hence the need for liberty to allow individuals to follow it where they best saw fit. No government could deign to tell its citizens where true happiness lay.

"And yet it is essential to appreciate that Jefferson also held strong views on what constituted the highest source of happiness, the purest pleasure of them all. "Happiness is the aim of life," he affirmed, "but virtue is the foundation of happiness." No 18th-century Founder--whether a Christian, a classicist or a cultivator of simple pleasures--would have disagreed.

"Here was the common assumption--what Jefferson called a "harmonizing sentiment"--that united Americans in their differences through the magic of e pluribus unum, making one of many. For in Christian, classical or Lockean terms, virtue at its highest meant serving one's fellow citizens, working for the public welfare, furthering the public good. It followed that virtue was the indispensable means to reconcile the conflicts of individual interest. However else they might differ in their understanding of the critical phrase, early Americans could agree that by pursuing the happiness of others, they helped to ensure their own.

"Jefferson's colleague Samuel Adams once observed that "we too often mistake our true happiness, and when we arrive to the enjoyment of that which seemed to promise it to us, we find that it is all an imaginary dream, at best fleeting and transitory." Lest our moments of private pleasure be as ephemeral as a rocket's red glare, we might vow this Fourth of July to pursue happiness in keeping with the Founders' full intent. Jefferson himself put it well. The best means to serve "the happiness and freedom of all," he noted in his first inaugural address, was to perform "all the good in my power." As much as the search for individual satisfaction, that too is an American way, the foundation of a truly noble pursuit."



 
Eurovision

I was watching the Eurovision song contest saturday - any of you in the US see it?
Even being part of Europe, I all the european countries a little strange, they are just so far removed from my countries way of life. Strange.

Here we all have smoke detectors, and dont really care where they come from, since they allow us to live. Radiation? i think they all still have radiation in them dont they? but then lots of things do Im sure.

Also english women always shave - arm pits, legs, amongst other places, our men also do a fair bit of trimming too!!!!!

LoL

Even our men can marry other men!!!! thats happyness to me!
 
Rich,

The depth and and breadth of your knowledge never ceases to amaze me. It has been too long since I read Locke to rightly remember most of his thoughts on the subject (and that, although I diligently listened to every word he said at the time, I did. Guess I am getting old :-))) - I did recall enough to quickly locate this:

"The constant desire of happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us to act for it, nobody, I think, accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment of liberty to be complained of."

(Book II, Chapter XXI, Of the Idea of Power. 51. A constant Determination to a Pursuit of Happiness no Abridgment of Liberty.)

Thank goodness for the internet, by the time I'd gone through my four volumes with a magnifying glass, it would have been the 22 century...

Everyone - from the days of the SPQR (actually the Greek democracies before) down to JFK's ...ask not, what your country can do for you..." has always argued that satisfaction lies in following duty and honor.
The question, to my mind is - do we ever "do" anything unless we want to? Either we do an unpleasant thing in order to avoid something even less pleasant - or we do what we want and look for a socially acceptable excuse afterwards.
Locke, JFK, Shakespeare in Marc Anthony's speech...all come down to this one point: Seeing the good of all as your own good - and therefore co-commitent to your own happiness. Co-commitent? O my paws and whiskers, it has too long been since I the English write...Hope you know what I mean.
Or maybe I just need a cup of coffee. It is early morning over here. Love to hear your ideas on this...I confess to having fulfilled my philosphy requirements at university with courses in logic and a few essays for final exams which were so peppered with Latin (now forgotten) that my profs. thought I must be competent...silly them.
 
John,

Don't be angry, but England and the US are far more similar than either country wishes to admit.
(OK, now the flame war can start.)
Nobody in my circle of US friends even knew what I was talking about when I asked them whether they had seen the Eurovision contest...nor did they care.
There is a very strong sense of "if it isn't here, it doesn't matter" in the US.
Just ask anyone who Juri Gagarin was...
 

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