I’m still thinking about those screw-shaped lightbulbs and the little ballasts that are now starting to go bad (Firegeezer story HERE). We had a couple of comments about other’s experiences with discovering this new reason for people to get excited and call Big Red. At first there’s a trial and error search as the FF’s look around for the source of this familiar smell that isn’t normally found in a dwelling but in a store.
Now we’re able to pass the word around the fire/rescue community and save you some time by letting you know early that this is happening. The hardest part is going to be getting the public to take a minute to check their lightbulbs when they smell it, too. The problem is, most people have never knowingly smelled a hot ballast so they can’t associate the odor with the new bulbs. Let’s just hope they turn their lights off before we go to bed.
It reminded me of the time that I had to chase down a smell of something burning in a kitchen but the source was very elusive for us. It was a strong wood fire smell. Definitely wood. You could smell the wood burning when we first walked into the house, but it was the strongest in the kitchen. So naturally we looked through the cabinets first. And then we started looking everywhere (including the basement and attic). After about 5 or 10 minutes we were really getting frustrated with it. We knew we had to find it because it wasn’t dissipating.
To make a longer story short, I finally stumbled across it when I opened up the automatic dishwasher. The burnt-wood smell came out in full stink and there it was: a wooden spoon had fallen from the rack and was laying across the heating element that is used to dry the dishware. A couple of really nice scorch marks across the spoon where it was cooking while we were searching.
After that, whenever we found a burning-wood smell in a kitchen, that was the first place I’d look. And sure enough, that was usually the culprit. Boy, did I look like a genius to the people who lived there. Just walked right in and solved their problem in a flash. And I have always been particularly careful since then about how I load the wooden spoons in my own dishwasher.
Now let’s get particularly careful about checking out this equipment this morning. I’ll start another pot of coffee. See you in the day room.
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