A Note on Fire Safety

I’ll be the first to admit that I know absolutely nothing when it comes to plumbing, carpentry, electricity, or anything else related to home improvement. However, last week when I put a load of laundry into the drier, I noticed that something was amiss. I’m not sure what clued me in first – was it the stench of hot, burning metal, the ominous black puffs of smoke being expelled from the outlet, or the simple fact that my clothes just weren’t dry? Seen from the photos below, our drier plug and outlet aren’t exactly in prime condition.


This is actually the state in which we found both the plug and outlet a year ago so we were pleasantly surprised that this setup lasted us through the entire year last year.

Apparently, this is a common problem and has something to do with attempting to plug a drier (which has more voltage than your everyday household appliance) into a normal outlet. On top of using a normal voltage outlet, all Taiwanese outlets noticeably lack the third “ground” prong hole (this is all very technical jargon) making the use of driers even more precarious.

So, after the smoking outlet incident, we asked our repair guy (via the school secretary) to please take a look at the offending outlet. Very kindly, they replaced the outlet so that it was free of all scary black marks. However, this week when I put our freshly washed sheets into the menacing little machine, the same black smoke poured out of our fresh, white outlet. Sadly resigning to the idea that we do, indeed, need a new drier, I pulled the wet garments out once again. Lacking any outdoor area in which to hang our laundry, we were forced to hang everything inside our apartment. Dripping sheets, shirts, towels, and undies turned our home into a soggy little maze of wet clothes. I am happy to report, however, that now on Sunday afternoon, all of our clothes have effectively dried and been put away. I don’t know, maybe if we don’t get a new drier by next week, we can put up strobe lights and charge kids to come through the haunted swamp house. What do you think?