Friday, February 20, 2015

Appliance Woes,
With a Happy Ending
--Sorta

A technician showed up at the Aerie today to look at the 8-year old dishwasher that suddenly stopped running yesterday. It worked fine on Tuesday but when Terry went to wash dishes on Thursday she got nothing; nada; zilch.

Anyway, the tech guy (When did they stop being called repairmen?) showed up about 4:50 PM. Guess we were last on his list for the day.

He looked over the dishwasher, entered the make and model numbers into his little computer, pulled off a couple of front panels w-a-y down by the floor and did a couple of preliminary tests.

"It's not getting any power," he says. "Have you checked the circuit breaker?"

Well, since I hadn't yet been cleared to go up and down stairs, Terry had gone down on Thursday to check the breakers and they all looked a-okay to her eye. Now that I have been cleared to go up and down stairs by the physical therapists (whose last visit to this no longer home bound boy was today, BTW) I went down to check again. I had the tech guy in tow.

All the breakers looked okay to me. The sheet that serves as a key to the 30+ breakers said the dishwasher was breaker #27 so we paid special attention to that one. It was fine.

Tech guy switched breaker #27 on and off a couple of times and then went back to looking at the dishwasher. He couldn't find anything wrong at the washer so went back downstairs to the breakers one more time. He left the washer in the "on" position. He flipped a couple more breakers and BINGO! the dishwasher switched on.

Seems the key to the box was mislabeled. The dishwasher wasn't breaker #27 it was breaker #29. And breaker #29 HAD been tripped although it looked like it was a-okay. DOH!

Having cleared that problem up, he checked the wires in the dishwasher (something tripped the circuit breaker!) and put the panels back in place.

"If it does this again, check the circuit breaker and replace it if need be. They do wear out from time to time."

$150 to discover 1) it was a circuit breaker, one of the easiest fixes in the world and 2) the circuit box key is not to be trusted. Now I have to figure out what IS covered by breaker #27.

4 comments:

Cathy said...

Followed you over from Marianne's blog - where you always leave such nice comments. Let me add my good wishes for healing and comfort. AND Spring!

threecollie said...

I feel your pain. Breakers are a wonderful invention, but I don't think I have ever seen any that were labeled correctly. lol

joated said...

Threecollie, the worst of it is, I helped build this house and I was the one who labeled the damn breakers!

Cathy, welcome and thank you for the good wishes.

Ruth said...

Good luck with that! Whoever wired our house did all sorts of screwy stuff for us to figure out (and re-wire once we can afford an electrician to do it all....).