Electrical Outlet

So last week our microwave stopped working, and we smelt burning plastic. So I unplugged it until I could look at it. I plugged it back in without the cover on, it threw sparks inside. Not surprising, it was from the 1970s and microwaves don’t last forever. So I left it plugged in and we started smelling the plastic again, the inside was hot. You could actually see a capacitor arching to a screw in the board.

So it was unplugged, and we got a new microwave.

Plugged in the new microwave and it didn’t work. Tried the new microwave in another outlet and it worked perfectly. So I took the plug cover off. The microwave surging had cooked the plug. The outlet had melted in the wall. The box was a little melted but still served its purpose so I left it.



It wasn’t as bad as it looked. I had an old surge protected outlet to replace it with. I’m not a fan of them, had them in my garage and just plugging in a welder will set them off.



So I took the old one out, the wires were not that bad, I wrapped the live wire in some electric tape. It had some bubbles in the plastic coating. But I wrapped it up and hooked up the outlet. I'm replacing the wiring from knob and tube and old strand wires to new ez pull wires piece by piece anyway so it will get changed in about a year.



I turned the power back on and nothing burnt down. Or shot sparks. So I plugged the microwave in and it worked. I left the cover off for a day to make sure the house wasn’t going to burn down, and then I put it back on.



I like to think I saved the house from a fire.