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Britian’s ITV investigates Bosch dishwasher fires

A guest blog reader kindly alerted me to an investigation by Britain’s ITV channel which aired two days ago on Bosch dishwashers catching fire. The report is highly critical of the “voluntary recall” process that Bosch seems to be using, pointing out that nearly half a million potentially faulty Bosch dishwashers are still in use in the UK.

I’m still working my way through the ITV report but I assume this number is based this on the models that have been recalled but not yet fixed. I’d like to know if situations like mine have been considered: models which haven’t been recalled yet still pose a fire hazard?

Here’s the first of the video reports. I’ll see if I can link to the others (though it appears ITV is using some kind of country-specific DRM-cruft to block viewing here in the States).

Reports of Bosch dishwasher fires pour in

I did a search of the CPSC website, SaferProducts.gov, to see if my Bosch dishwasher report had been posted yet. What I found was a shocking number of similar reports, many of them of full-fledged fires that started in Bosch’s defective control board. Many of these reports are for the recalled models, but not all of them! It seems my problem is not unique.

Over just the past 12 months there have been 26 reports filed on Bosch dishwashers.
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Bosch dishwashers recalled for fire hazard

Over the weekend our Bosch dishwasher began to run in an “infinite loop,” with the countdown timer always showing 1 minute left. This went on for hours. We looked up info on the problem, discovered how to fix it, and successfully repaired our dishwasher. However, I learned this morning that our dishwasher was subject to a recall for this very reason.

From the Consumer Product Safety Commission:

Hazard: An electrical component in certain model dishwashers can overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: BSH Home Appliances has received 51 reports of incidents, including 30 reports of fires resulting in property damage. No injuries have been reported.

A component on the dishwasher’s control board arced and melted, growing hot enough to potentially cause a fire. Because the dishwasher is quiet, we often run it as we are going to bed. I shudder to think what might have happened if it had caught fire while we were asleep, separating us from our children’s bedrooms!

If you have a Bossh dishwasher whose model number appears on the recall list, STOP USING IT IMMEDIATELY and CALL BOSCH! They will come out and correct the fire hazard for free.

We were very lucky ours wasn’t more serious than it was. Take action before it happens to you!

See these links for more details:
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2009/Bosch-and-Siemens-Model-Dishwashers-Recalled-by-BSH-Home-Appliances-Corporation-Due-to-Fire-Hazard/

http://www.bosch-home.com/us/support/safety-notices/dishwasher-recall.html

Fixed dishwasher

Bosch dishwasher control board


This past Sunday we noticed our Bosch dishwasher never shut off. It got stuck at the end of the cycle, with one minute showing on the timer for well over two hours. Kelly did some hunting on the Internet and diagnosed the problem as a faulty control board.

More sleuthing turned up a YouTube Video showing not only how to get to the control board, but how to fix it, too! A faulty relay was the culprit, and if one is handy at soldering it is a quick fix. I could also skip the soldering and replace the control board. When my local parts store didn’t have it in stock, I was faced with a choice: I could either wait for a new control board to be delivered or I could wait for a relay to be delivered.
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Cheap Thoughts: Telepresence

Speaking of working from home, we have an arrangement here at work that is a pretty interesting use of telepresence tools. One of our developers works remotely but needs to attend occasional meetings. Rather than fly him in and out, we’ve set him up with a Wifi-enabled camera which he can use to pan, tilt, and zoom around the room. All that’s missing is some way for him to drive the camera from room to room and he could be virtually here. The camera isn’t cheap but it easily paid for itself the very first time it kept our developer from traveling.

I was thinking of bringing in my now-unused Roomba vacuum and using that to move the camera around. I could slap a small UPS battery on top to power the camera and interface it with the camera software to let it be controlled remotely.

Another thing that would be useful to telepresence tools would be an additional fisheye-lens camera. This should show the whole room in a separate window while the main camera is pointed somewhere else. When the viewer needs to focus on something or someone in the room, the viewer will know where the main camera needs to be pointed. Better yet, the viewer could simply click on a point on the room image and the main camera would point there. That might make it painless enough that attending a meeting virtually wouldn’t be so much about fiddling with the tools but being able to focus on the meeting itself.

Interesting stuff. I’ll have to see what I can put together to make this work.

Pullen Park punch passes

Let’s get rid of these lines at Pullen Park


On the beautiful, fall-like morning that was Sunday morning, the family joined Kelly’s parents for a visit to Raleigh’s Pullen Park. Pullen Park went through a recent renovation and is now more popular than ever. So popular, in fact, that there are now long lines queuing up for its attractions.

I got to Pullen before anyone else, so I bided my time by waiting in line for tickets to the attractions.

“This is unproductive,” I thought to myself.

The woman in front of me gave me a tip to buy a bunch of tickets at once so I wouldn’t have to wait again. That seemed like a good idea, until I saw she was purchasing 60 tickets. The ticket machine spit out 60 tickets, one at a time. It took a while and the pile of tickets she was handed was a bit unwieldy.
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Garage door resonance


I was coming inside after watering some plants when I noticed the 3 qt. plastic container in my hand was strongly vibrating. I then realized that it was resonating almost perfectly with the sound my garage door opener was making!

That makes me think that if my garage is resonating with my opener it could be amplifying the noise the opener makes. A little creative adjustment to the position of the garage door opener might greatly dampen the noise created from my opener.

Progress to investigate utility pole vandalism

Another missing grounding wire

I reached out to a contact I have at Progress Energy about the thefts of copper wiring from my neighborhood’s utility poles. Marty Clayton, Community Relations Manager, called me back today and told me the utility has had other reports of this crime and would send someone out to evaluate the damage in my area. He said these thieves are taking their lives into their own hands with these thefts, going so far as to break into live substations.

I spent some time today before and after work, tagging some of the damaged poles with red marker tape. I’m finding that about one out of every two poles I check has its copper missing, and some of the missing pieces are only two feet long.

Why would someone put themselves and surrounding neighbors at risk just to steal five bucks of metal? I just don’t get it.

Copper thieves targeting Raleigh utility poles

This pole on Edmund Street is not protected against shorts and lightning due to a clipped grounding wire (lower left).


I happened to take a glance at the utility poles my dog was peeing on this morning and was aghast to see that many of them were missing their copper grounding wires! I’ve blogged about lightning protection before, and during last summer’s thunderstorm season I had read about how important these grounding wires are to the safety of our homes and the safety of the linemen who work on the electrical gear. Here were a half-dozen poles on this short street that were missing the first six feet of their grounds.

I sent out an email to the neighborhood, urging folks to call in any other broken poles they saw. While I didn’t hear back from my neighbors, I did check the poles on Glascock as I drove to the grocery store this afternoon and saw many poles in the same sad condition.

I don’t know when these thefts took place but it makes me angry that some metal-thieving asshat is jeopardizing the safety of my family just to make a few measly bucks. If lightning hits a utility pole within a few blocks, my home could burn down because of these missing grounding wires.

This is a serious safety issue and there’s no telling how hard Raleigh has been hit. I’m hoping these get discovered before people find out the hard way that their homes are sitting ducks for lightning.

(As pure coincidence, WRAL ran a story today about these utility pole copper thefts occurring in Wayne county.)

Doggone and back

Nyla, a.k.a "Chimmy"

We were circled around the chimnea in the driveway last night, mesmerized by its flames and enjoying the chat with our neighbors. A man walked down the street with a dog on a leash, which is certainly nothing new as it happens all the time in my neighborhood. When he walked up our driveway, though, our curiosity was raised.

“Anybody know where this dog lives?” he cheerfully asked.
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