Checking and maintaining appliances

TIMES INT'L

So here’s the scenario, you buy a new appliance… works well for a few weeks, even months, then suddenly dies on you, and you just push it in a corner or dump it and move on to a new purchase…sounds familiar?
You may be surprised, but quite a bit of appliance malfunctions and breakdowns are fixable by your average user. You may also be surprised that the majority of these malfunctions and breakdowns are caused by improper or poor use and maintenance. Did you bother to read the manual after buying that last appliance?
As a précis…here are some troubleshooting tips that you may find useful for your appliances, small and large.
Generally applicable to all electrical appliances:
If you have a problem where the appliance turns on for a short while and then shuts off blowing a fuse or tripping the breaker or if you spot the outlet burnt, then you probably are overloading your appliance or the outlet.
Outlets come with a specific rating in amps usually, so make sure you don’t overload. A quick way to check is to add the amps from the nameplate of the appliances you plug into the outlet and make sure that amount does not exceed the rated amount of the outlet. Also, make sure you check the appliance user manual too, sometimes, you may inadvertently overload the appliance itself and cause it to overheat, if so, take it off, let it cool down, make sure you clean the vents, fans, filters etc. and then restart it.
Most often, just commonsense gets you out of problems like these, don’t forget, we are dealing with electricity here, so safety first!!! Isolate power supply, turn off switches and breakers when performing any checks and servicing, use the appropriate tool properly and safely.
In the next installments, we will continue along the same vein and look at fixes that are appliance specific…take care until then.

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