Monday, February 3, 2014

Bone-headed stunt: Charcoal apples anyone??

The other evening I put a slice of apple pie in the oven to warm up while we ate our popcorn and watched something from Netflix. I should explain that we live in a small place, in fact our whole house is basically one room + a bathroom, so our 'oven' is actually a combination microwave and convection oven.

Because it can do many different things, if we want to heat something up in oven mode at 350 degrees for 15 minutes you have to punch a total of 8 buttons. It sounds a little complicated but this is something I have done countless times; except this night I somehow managed to punch the wrong buttons - still don't know how.

So we're sitting there all happy and warm with our popcorn and movie when my eyes start to sting. I look over towards the kitchen area and can't see a thing because of the smoke! By the time I could get up out of my easy chair, not always an easy thing to do, especially in times of panic, the whole room, and both of us, were choked with thick smoke. I managed to stumble my way to the oven, turn it off, then dash out into the barn juggling a smoking bowl of what used to be apple pie.

Just so you know, don't nuke apple pie on high in the micro for 15 minutes! It doesn't like that!

But the most worrisome thing about this (Other than my complete lack of ability to perform a simple function after years of practice.) was that the smoke detector never went off. Once we got some of the smoke blown out of the room I lowered the smoke detector, the silent smoke detector, (Our ceilings are nearly 14' high so we have the detector on a pulley system so we don't need a ladder to reach it.) and punched the test button.

There it is!!! Alarming away just like it's supposed to. I guess the damn thing can ignore actual smoke, but not the test button! I had a spare detector out in the shop, which I tested with real smoke before installing it.

From now on I won't be using the test button every month, instead I will be actually smoking the thing to make sure it's working. . .

Oh, and it's been nearly a week now and we finally have most of the smell out of the house.

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