This is my true story, ENJOY! My mishap just happened this past monday the 28th of january 2013. My wife had got up around 6:30am to get ready to goto work while I was sleeping like a bear in hibernation because Im working the evening shift and had stayed up to watch my recorded show AXE MEN and eat a bag of popcorn! I was awakened to her screaming the house is freezing and the vents are blowing cold air! I managed to open my eyes and pull the covers back to sit up in bed to start getting dressed when I realized, it's freezing in here! What is going on! My heart skipped a beat and my adrenaline started pumping to prepare me for the catostrophic event that had forced me from my beauty sleep. My first two thoughts- 1. My boiler had sprung a leak and all the hot water had ran out so it was no longer making it to my house! 2. My pump has died and I dont have a spare so Im going to have to start up the ole trusty indoor wood stove! I threw on some sweat pants, a tee shirt, my old sneakers and my fill up the wood stove jacket and headed down into the basement. I first went to the breaker box to check and see if maybe a breaker had just kicked and I could reset it and go back to bed, but no such luck. I threw open the basement door heading outside into the semi-lit morning when I quickly realized we had gotten the freezing rain the weather man was forecasting, I almost fell on my hiney with my first step and boy was it a doozy. I looked like a person ice skating for the first time, just could'nt get my feet under me, arm's out like they were air plane wings and I was flying! Much smaller more careful steps from here on out I promise. I made my way to my stove thats about 60 feet away and slightly down hill making sure each foot was secure before moving the other. Like I said earlier we had gotten freezing rain so everthing was wet and frozen so from a diastance I thought the worst. I finally made it to the stove and opened the door where the water level and ranco are housed and to my surprise the water level was still up, No Leaks!I then opened the firebox door and all was dry and smoldering just like it has been so I closed it up. Looked back up to the ranco and no temperature was being displayed, but I checked the breaker! Dang it my thermostat had failed me I thought but that doesn't explain why the pumps not running.....Im on to something here. I think it was at this point that my brain really woke up.........we have a underground dog fence with lightning protection and it's on a ground fault interrupter outlet. MY stove is on a outlet on the other side of the basement but it is tied into that same gfi, ding ding ding we have a winner! I think? Slowly back up the slope to the basement and inside I slid, sure enough the light on the dog fence is off, yes I figured it out finally! Or had I? I removed the large plug for the lightining protector for the fence and hit the reset.......it poped right back out! WTF! OK maybe the pump has shorted and is kicking the gfi off so I walked to the other side of the basement and pulled the plug going to the outdoor wood stove, still the gfi would not reset. What now? Well there is one more thing plugged into the outlet where the stove is plugged in, it goes to the block heater on our Ford superduty diesel, could it have shorted and be my problem? Lets find out. I slid back out side and looked to my surprise to see the truck is plugged in and the plug is hanging out the front bumper with the cord covered in ice. WOW! I unplugged the cord from the truck, threw it back toward the basement, slid back inside unplugged the extension cord from the wall, ran back to the gfi, hit the reset and PRESTO! POWER! The water temp. in the stove was 187 while the temp. in the house had dropped to 62 degrees, I know freezing right. LOL Took a minute or two and the lines coming into the heat exchanger were hot and the vents in the house were blowing hot air. I made my grand entrance back into the house stating that I had fixed the problem but it was her fault. "How was it my fault"? She asked. Well I said "you know that truck that you plugged up so it would start so easy and have almost instant heat and no frozen ice on the windshield"? "Yea" she said. "Well it's frozen like a giant block of ice and the house was cold beacuse when you plugged it up you didn't tuck the plug in the bumper and all that rain/ice ran down in the plug and kicked the gfi out on the stove, truck, and dog fence" I said. "Oh, well I didn't mean to" she said as I laid back down to goto sleep in my nice warm house!
Author
Topic: Stove mishaps (Read 17294 times)