I'm staying up all night...

[WDWAurora]

Ugh. That's my only real reaction at this point, I suppose. Tonight, we had just laid down to go to bed, since we have a newborn. Maybe 9:30? I told DH I smelled something, and he agreed, but we kind of ignored it. Then, he goes downstairs to get some heartburn medicine, and calls me to come help him figure out where the smell is coming from, since it's way worse downstairs, and mildly smoky. Nothing is hot, and hardly anything is even plugged in. So...I called my dad to see if it was fire department worthy.

Obviously it was. I just didn't want to be overreacting. So I called, got some real clothes on, and took the baby and sat in the yard. The firemen eventually determined it was our downstairs AC unit, although DH has since determined that it is our refrigerator. I don't like the conflicting determinations, so I'm staying up all night to make sure we're ok. We're probably buying a fridge in the morning, and I still want to have our AC unit checked, although DH turned it back on, and unplugged the fridge, and I'm sitting downstairs with no smell.

DH has issues with no sleep, so he's upstairs sleeping with the baby in the room, so if there is a problem, he can have the baby out quickly, but I think everything is fine. I don't think we would have actually ended up with a fire (assuming it's the fridge), but I'd rather stay up. I can sleep tomorrow. My in-laws will come and sit with the baby for me, or I can go there.

Again, ugh. Any advice on fridges?

 

[cheermom1]

Sorry to hear that, that is not fun at all. Very scary! I don;t know much about fridges but I hope everything is ok.

 

[DVCLiz]

Ugh. That's my only real reaction at this point, I suppose. Tonight, we had just laid down to go to bed, since we have a newborn. Maybe 9:30? I told DH I smelled something, and he agreed, but we kind of ignored it. Then, he goes downstairs to get some heartburn medicine, and calls me to come help him figure out where the smell is coming from, since it's way worse downstairs, and mildly smoky. Nothing is hot, and hardly anything is even plugged in. So...I called my dad to see if it was fire department worthy.

Obviously it was. I just didn't want to be overreacting. So I called, got some real clothes on, and took the baby and sat in the yard. The firemen eventually determined it was our downstairs AC unit, although DH has since determined that it is our refrigerator. I don't like the conflicting determinations, so I'm staying up all night to make sure we're ok. We're probably buying a fridge in the morning, and I still want to have our AC unit checked, although DH turned it back on, and unplugged the fridge, and I'm sitting downstairs with no smell.

DH has issues with no sleep, so he's upstairs sleeping with the baby in the room, so if there is a problem, he can have the baby out quickly, but I think everything is fine. I don't think we would have actually ended up with a fire (assuming it's the fridge), but I'd rather stay up. I can sleep tomorrow. My in-laws will come and sit with the baby for me, or I can go there.

Again, ugh. Any advice on fridges?

I like the newer ones that have the french doors on top and the freezer on the bottom.

Now go upstairs and go to bed - you will not be able to sleep tomorrow as much as you think you will and you will be exhausted all week.

Go to bed!

 

[WDWAurora]

I'm leaning toward french doors and a bottom freezer. We have a side by side, and freezer space gets tricky. I bought an ice cream cake for my dad's birthday when he was here last week, and it BARELY fit width-wise. Ugh, don't want to spend the money, especially while I'm out on leave with the baby!

I know I won't get to sleep too much tomorrow, but if they can give me 3 or so uninterrupted hours, I'll catch up during the week. It's good that I'm not working right now! It allows me to maintain a healthy level of paranoia. I'm too worried that DH is wrong and the firemen were right...I'm too worried about the baby. If we didn't have him, I would go to bed.

 

[Silent1CB]

Hasty appliance shopping without research and on a lack of sleep sounds like a costly mistake to me.

Maybe you could do online research with Consumers Report during the night. Checking out which brands to stay away from and which have less problems.

Good luck.

 

[NC Belle]

I hope that you are getting some rest.

We sometimes use a coil brush to clean the back of our fridge and the bottom portion.

I like my Sis-in-law's french door fridge with the freezer on the bottom. It has an alarm that sounds off if the doors are not fully closed. Our fridge is freezer on top and I wish that we have a different model, but the location of it limits our options.

I highly recommend getting your a/c checked/tuned up. We had an issue back in August 2008 when our heat pump burnt out a part and the unit needed the hard to reach coils cleaned. We had our regular heat/a/c serviceman come 2 weeks ago and got a discount on our tune-up plus had to add some freon. He recommends using the cheaper fiberglass filters over the fancier pleated filters since they have the heat pump not work as hard.

Good luck!

 

[golfgal]

When our oldest was just a couple weeks old our smoke detector went off in the middle of the night-scared the you know what out of me. It was just a low battery but I couldn't get back to sleep

 

[MIGrandma]

I know exactly what you're talking about. It happened to us a few years ago. 3:00 in the morning and the smoke alarm goes off. I immediately sit up in bed and can smell an "electrical" smell, wake DH up and I want to call 9-1-1 immediately but he makes me wait while he walks around, downstairs and upstairs, to try and determine where the smell is coming from. I'm freaking out, grabbing photo albums, my cat and putting her in the carrier, throw everything in the car and back it out of the garage and park it a safe distance away.

He can't figure out where it's coming from, so he lets me call 9-1-1 finally. They send the fire dept. out (we have a volunteer dept. so it takes them 20 minutes to assemble and get here) and they walk around and can't find the source either. So they call the chief of a nearby fire dept. and they bring out a thermal imaging machine.

They then determine it's the compressor on our refrigerator.

We bought a new refrigerator the next day.

It's scary though, so I know how you're feeling.

 

[minnie56]

I had a small fire once actually in my fridge (long gone) in the butter conditioner! Hope yours is a little problem..

 

[Disneyrsh]

ok

 

[minnie56]

I had the GE Profile before the one I have now (Kitchen Aid) and loved it! Much better than this one..never had one problem with it. In fact, my Mail Lady bought it off of me and it's still perfect..

 

[WDWAurora]

I ended up going to bed around 2, after the air had been running downstairs for a couple of hours, so I was sure it wasn't going to start a fire. I did check consumer reports, and I bought the #1 rated french door fridge. I actually got an amazing deal-Lowe's had a floor model, which also means it will be delivered tomorrow, instead of having to wait for one to come in. Not bad! It also had great customer reviews online, so between Consumer reports and customer reviews, I think we made a good purchase.

NC Belle-Would you PM me the name of your AC company? Ours informed me this morning that they are no longer in the AC business and are only doing "projects," whatever that means.

Surprisingly, when I went to bed I slept very well (for about 3 hrs, then the baby was up, then for maybe 45 more minutes until DH had to go to work, then we were up for the day).

DH's mom is on her way to help me with the baby while I clean out the fridge and (hopefully) take a nap.

 

[NC Belle]

I ended up going to bed around 2, after the air had been running downstairs for a couple of hours, so I was sure it wasn't going to start a fire. I did check consumer reports, and I bought the #1 rated french door fridge. I actually got an amazing deal-Lowe's had a floor model, which also means it will be delivered tomorrow, instead of having to wait for one to come in. Not bad! It also had great customer reviews online, so between Consumer reports and customer reviews, I think we made a good purchase.

NC Belle-Would you PM me the name of your AC company? Ours informed me this morning that they are no longer in the AC business and are only doing "projects," whatever that means.

Surprisingly, when I went to bed I slept very well (for about 3 hrs, then the baby was up, then for maybe 45 more minutes until DH had to go to work, then we were up for the day).

DH's mom is on her way to help me with the baby while I clean out the fridge and (hopefully) take a nap.

PM sent

 

[Maleficent Lives]

Again, ugh. Any advice on fridges?

Two bits of advice:

One- If you are going to stay awake all night, stay away from spinning wheels.

Two- The french door refrigerators are cool, but if you get one, everything in the freezer will be stacked on top of everything else. Mine is a bit of a mess all the time.