...and out went all the lights!

[venta]

I just lifted the iron down from the shelf, and found its base was covered in rust. I cleaned it off with a brillo pad, but fear I might have got some water in the works because plugging it in shorted out the power for the entire house. Twice.

hendybear, maybe we shouldn't have used the iron to defrost the freezer after all.

Comments

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Hairdryers actually work brilliantly, next time you're defrosting.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No. Hairdryers work adequately, steam irons work brilliantly.

Besides, I don't believe anyone in this house owns a hairdryer.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

steam irons work brilliantly.

once.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Winces.
That also damages the freezer elements you know.

Oh well, i'm sure hendybear didn't like that freezer or iron anyway :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I figured it was his choice and his freezer :)

Nice use of icon, by the way.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

It seemed an appropriate icon.

I reckon freezers need a reverse button, a bit like self inflating (and deflating) airbeds.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

I reckon freezers need a reverse button, a bit like self inflating (and deflating) airbeds.

It would not be particularly difficult to implement. Commercial ice makers work in a very similar way to freezers, but in order to release the ice cubes once they've been made they have a bypass valve that allows hot refrigerant gas to circulate through the cooling elements.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Shame - defrosting the freezer with an iron is a brilliant idea.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It works really, really well - took us about ten minutes or so to get thick ice off all sides of a chest freezer.

(This was a steam iron, I don't know if a normal iron would do such a good job.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Maybe next time dry it off afterwards?

More helpfully, put a 5-amp fuse in its plug, or the plug of any successor iron - you don't really want the house fuses to be blowing when an appliance shorts! I guess the thing about the cobbler's children also applies to the tenants of electrical-engineer landlords...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I thought we had dried it off!

Wouldn't an iron need more than a 5A fuse ? Also, we have the popping kind of fuse in our house, so blowing isn't so serious!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

5A is plenty, it would be a pretty exciting kind of iron which was more than 1200W. (Quick search turns up this in support.)

Glad to hear you didn't have to fiddle around with fuse wire, at least!

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Unless it's shorting to earth, or course, in which case you very much want an RCD to go, rather than hanging around waiting for some stupid bit of fuse wire to melt.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Good point, I wasn't thinking of that! -- but fortunately changing the iron's own fuse from 13A to 5A shouldn't affect that scenario adversely.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

A normal iron would not fill itself full of ice and then go rusty, if it didn't have steam bits on the inside.

Leave it outside in the sun! (What sun. Put it in the airing cupboard.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

What airing cupboard!

It definitely wasn't full of ice. I'm leaving it to dry out, though, in the hopes it'll work again.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

To short out all the power ones could be counted a misfortune. To short out all the power tice, looks like carelessness.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Although apparently, not as much as failing to spell-check your comments does. Tice?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I dunno. "To short out all the power tice" sounds like the beginning of some pleasantly Chaucerian blank verse. The Ironer's Tale, maybe.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Or a deleted verse from Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic".

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

*ow*

Btw, venta - have you considered placing a succession of bowls full of boiling water in the freezer? Works quite well in my experience, and I've not broken any irons yet. Those plastic freezer scrapers are quite handy too, and you can also use them on car windscreens. :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Nah, that takes ages :)

(And you get the sensible grown-up award.)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Hoorah!

[zotz]

A friend of mine set out to defrost the freezer with a breadknife. That failed in a different way.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Sliced freezer ? Sliced friend ?

[zotz]

Hissing noise, friend with frosty eyebrows.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It wasn't me, was it? Because I do that, but I don't remember having ever broken it in the process.

[zotz]

No, it wasn't. One of my more colourful university friends. I think he lives in Newcastle these days.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

I once defrosted a freezer with the nail-removing bit of a hammer. The freezer was certainly defrosted throughly... after I hit one of the cooling loops...

[zotz]

That sounds like much the same experience.

Fridges are one of the most reliable machines ever invented, until you let human beings near them.

[(Anonymous)]

Buy a frost-free freezer?

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Did it not blow the fuse the third time, or had you given up by then?

[(Anonymous)]

At least you hadn't tried to use it to heat up your cooled-down bathwater!

[(Anonymous)]

At least you hadn't tried to use it to heat up your cooled-down bathwater!

Cathy xxx