the weekend of burning smells

[sistawendy]

Burning Smell #1: Yesterday I let the magic smoke out of my vacuum cleaner. Luckily, I was just finishing the vacuuming prior to my son's arrival. After I got it unplugged and outdoors so it wouldn't stink up the place, I noticed that the brush had an awful lot of my hair wrapped around it. I'm guessing that that isn't a coincidence. I removed about a fistful. I'll see if anyone will attempt to repair it tomorrow.

Burning Smell #2: This morning my son had turned my push-button electric range on high instead of off after he finished cooking his scrambled eggs. The smell wasn't the residual eggs as we first thought; it was the plastic spatula that he'd left in the pan. About twenty minutes of gentle scratching with my fingernail separated the former spatula from the Teflon on the skillet. The skillet looks OK now, but I've had people tell me since then that it's unusable. It's still in much better shape than the Teflon pan that Nibs gave me. Hmm.

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I'm really hairless on my face, neck, and chest right now. I'm scheduled for four-hour appointments for the rest of the year, but I'm hoping I can go down to three next year. That'll make both Aspiring Ex and me happy.

Comments

[leenerella]

Was that magic smoke, or did the belt get bound up? Belts are easy to replace.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I didn't try to open it up.

[leenerella]

Aha! It's very likely that there is enough hair/string wrapped around the brush that it bound the belt.

There should be some screws on the bottom so you can take the cover off and get in there and clean it out. You may find a broken belt in there (or a severely compromised one). You can get the belt model number, hit a hardware store and get a new one to replace it. Then you fit the brush back in, tightened the cover on with the screws, and your vacuum works better than ever, for $10 or less.

(Those belts can REALLY stink when that happens. Blech.)

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I live just down the ridge from a hardware store, so this might be doable.

[leenerella]

Just be sure to do the research and find out what exact belt you need. Coming home with the wrong one sucks. Hehe.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

And you're right about that smell. Ye gods!

[mahariel.livejournal.com]

My hair has burned so many vacuum cleaner belts. Husband keeps a stock of them.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Ayunh. I need to hit one of the larger Ace Hardwares to get at least one Eureka type U belt.