Crazy in the Heat
Okau, so we own three fans, that we've had for over a year each.
One is a floor fan, the standard tall-pole-with-fan-on-top thing. It's currently in the possession of Touque and his lovely wife, who are using it to dry up the last vestiges of their flooded basement.
The second is a window-fan, a double bladed deal that you stick into your window to get some inwards (or outwards) draft. We've had it for a couple years. It was only working sort of. It wouldn't work until it had been on for a few minutes then slowly it would creak to life. In the last week it had started making an odd squeeking noise and two nights ago it finally just stopped.
The third is an air-recirculating fan, a nice floor-level guy that really gets the air moving. When the window fan died, we propped the recirculating fan in front of our bedroom window -- in the top level of our house it seems to get awfully hot and I can't sleep when it's really hot.
Last night it started making an odd noise and while I was fussing with it in the dark, I noticed that it made visibly bright sparks when the settings were changed and even sparked once when I wasn't touching it. Gee, sounds like a fire hazard to me, so we shut it off. Thankfully it was cool enough to live through.
So now we have no fans until Touque is done with it (and I don't want it back until you are, Touque! You guys have it worse than us right now). Every window in the house is covered and the furnace fan is blowing, so I hope it'll be cool enough to live tonight.
Yuck.