Never take advice from the internet.

[washer_man]

Actually drying items that contain cooking oils is a little more pernicious than fa_f3_20 implies, because this can cause fires even if the item in question has already gone through the washer.

This means that if you mop of some spilled cooking oil with a rag, and then toss this rag into the laundry hamper, you are potentially risking a fire when this same rag goes through the dryer.

 

[goatfarmer]

That was funny, Carmine!

 

[jons1077]

Two funny things here...

1. I was dying know why someone would do something so dumb (and thank goodness it was just a joke!)

2. Seeing Robert, of all people, tell us to "lighten up"

 

[Unimatic1140]

Seeing Robert, of all people, tell us to "lighten up"
Well I've never!
Actually the lighten up was not meant for everyone, only the three people who sent me emails about this thread telling me I better check it out (translation: delete it).

 

[spankomatic]

Dryer fire story

When I was a small boy I lived in a neighborhood that had gas dryers in the garages of the the houses. It was a hot summer day and many left the garage door open. Some pranksters decided to go around and put news papers in the gas dryers,turn them on,and run. 7 garages were on fire on the street. I remember my mother saying thank god we have electric and a laundry room. The fire department closed the entire street and had to send out a strike team to put all of the houses out.

 

[fa_f3_20]

Wow, Spank, that is some story. Many decades ago, we used to have a Norge Village here. The dryers ran hotter than Hades. They had a big chrome temperature lever across the panel at the top. You dried towels on Medium, cotton shirts on Med/Low, and most other things on Low. You didn't put synthetics in there if you valued them. No one ever, ever in their right minds turned those things up to High.

Of course, every once in a while, someone did. As a result, there were nearly always at least one dryer (out of 20 or so) that was out of service because it had had a fire in it.

 

[rp2813]

Carmine has a sense of humor just like my partner's. After almost 22 years, I still can't always tell when he's joking and he still "punks" me (and NO! I am not a Kutcher--or whatever his name is--fan) a lot of the time.

 

[Cybrvanr]

This incident goes to show how innate people are for handling a situation like this. The homeowner upon smelling the odor should have done a few things like cutting power to EVERYTHING in the utility room (or even the whole house), then cutting off the gas line to the house. The thing is, I wonder how many people would even know how to do these simple things in the case of an emergency! While they didn't know where the smoke smell was coming from, disconnecting everything would have helped the situation considerably!

 

[toggleswitch]

oooh oooh oooh my turn

My mother's 1984 Sears Kenmore 24" wide DD popped an original hose at 2am-ish recently one early morning.

She has been in the house for 30 years and did not have the sense to shut one of the two sets of valves under the adjacent sink / laundry tubs. [one set kills the hose cocks, the other set both the sink and the hose cocks.] Nor did she think to shut off the incoming main water-service vale.

Thank you lawdy for placing my brother-in-law's residence just a few blocks from her. Well, at least she stuck the running broken hose in the sink 'till he arrived.

Moral of the story: REPLACE YOUR HOSES FREQUENTLY.