Article from the O & E Newspaper: THE OLD BECOMES NEW

Originally printed in the Observer & Eccentric Newspaper

In my beginning years of fixing appliances I spent some time in England staying in a Flat in downtown London. I was impressed by an AGA kitchen range which provided constant heat using oil as a fuel and venting to the outside. In the past 80 years it still proves to be a popular product used by thousands of the Queen’s subjects. Joe Henderson, a voice of many years in the appliance industry tells me they were also a high end range sold in this country some 50 years ago. My darling Valorie also tells me she has seen them in magazines on kitchen designs etc. The concept of this range makes me just slightly curious but not enough to purchase one. Even though this range can now be programmed by your cell phone I still can’t picture myself explaining to our neighbors why black smoke is coming out of a pipe on the side of our house. Sometimes I think I am such an old fashioned guy and love the way things once were. On my recent yearly fishing trip to the wilds of Northern Canada such became the case. My friends and I left early in the morning knowing full well that the largest forest fire in Canada was burning in close proximity to our fishing cabin. The fire was 100 miles long and 3 miles wide and was being fueled by 40 mph winds with no rain or calm weather in sight. All main highways were closed and would be for 10 to 14 days leaving just a bush road open to those either crazy enough or with plain old courage, to make the journey. We arrived at the fishing lodge and set up in our cabin which had no electricity because the power lines had been consumed by the forest fire. The portable generators were only big enough to supply the water pumps so we had running water and we used propane gas lanterns and candles just like the old days. We were now set for 7 days of fishing and adventure and hopefully would not be evacuated from our warm and heavenly spot.

My responsibility on these fishing trips is to wake up the guys at 5:30 and make a pot of coffee with the modern coffee maker of today which needs electricity to work properly. That was a problem until I opened a cupboard and spied sitting on the shelf this old beat up tin pot with a glass bubble on top. My memory clicked on and I figured out how to use it. You pull out this long rod which holds a round screen affair which you fill with coffee. You then fill the tin pot with water and place it on the burner of the gas range which is connected to a propane tank outside. You turn the burner on high until the coffee begins to percolate and then to low heat for 5 minutes. I poured 4 cups of coffee and placed them on the kitchen table and my 3 coffee drinking fishing buddies had nothing but compliments about the taste of their cups of coffee. And so after 3 days of living without electricity the power supply was restored and for the remainder of the trip, I was asked to use the tin pot and forget about the modern coffee maker sitting on the kitchen counter.

On a very personal level one of the guys was having a constipation problem and I used an old Indian method of curing the ailment. I stripped a small section of a Birch tree and after removing the bark; I cut out a quarter size chunk of the tree and had this guy chew on it for 15 minutes. It tastes like Turpentine but he said it worked better than the drugstore product. Such is the verbiage that  old can become new and 50 years from now homeowners will seek out old major home appliances because they were made better than today. Stay tuned. 

OnGard...Article by Joe Gagnon

IS ONGARD THE ANSWER?

After all of these years of writing this column I have always admired the standards of this newspaper’s ethics in journalism. My writings have never been used as an advertising medium but rather a true forum of consumer education. I will ask you to excuse me on this one occasion because the information I’m about to give you is so important, it takes precedence over my ethics as well. There is no money exchanging hands between this new company and myself nor do I expect there will be. It is a product produced here in Michigan and they need all of the publicity they can get but most important the smart consumer who is concerned about a clothes dryer fire needs to know about this product. It is called OnGARD and is a simple fire extinguisher which attaches to the back wall with a piece of plastic tubing leading into the base of the clothes dryer.

I don’t mean to simplify the concept but it took Gerald Flood, the inventor a short time to create this wonderful safety device. In the past, I have talked to manufacturer’s engineers and others about an extinguisher that could be installed within a clothes dryer to prevent the happening of a dryer fire. I’m sure the feeling from a manufacture is that installing a fire suppression system within a dryer would mean admitting that the product is at fault. Not  so, I claim as the homeowner is at fault here. They build a fine product which does the job very sufficiently and we the consumer don’t pay enough attention to how a clothes dryer operates. There are over 16,000 dryer fires reported each year in this country and I’ll bet that twice that amount go unreported. Many people are injured and many die and yet the news media does a terrible job of educating the American public. While this lack of concern seems prevalent and the way it is, this new invention can begin to save lives and make more homeowners aware.

I have been approached many times to endorse someone’s new product and I don’t bite all that often. Take the product invented a few years back that would save energy costs by simply plugging your refrigerator into it. I stated that it might cause a compressor failure and it did, but millions were made before the product was removed from store shelves. Someone is always out to make a quick buck in this world which should raise the caution flag in shopper’s habits. This new invention is just now hitting the market place and as you can tell, I believe in it very strongly. It is not difficult for a typical homeowner to install themselves. You mount the extinguisher to the wall behind the dryer and then run the plastic tube through a louver on the back of the dryer. The tube lays on the inside floor of the dryer and when the heat of the flame hits the tube, it propels a proven fire suppressor powder throughout the base of the dryer which puts out the fire. Another important factor is that there is enough powder expelled that some of it will travel up the vent line to extinguish and prevent the fire from spreading outside of the dryer. It is not expensive to purchase especially compared to the damage cost with most dryer fires. The life of the product is in the area of 6 years and the fire extinguisher has a gauge on it to tell you when it needs to be recharged. I have asked to be notified on the sad occasion of a dryer fire when this product has proven itself. Currently this product can be purchased at www.ongard.biz or call 1-800-338-9010.

I recently spent some time appearing at the January edition of the Novi Home Improvement show and I want to thank the many people who stopped by and said hello. It’s a fact that so many of you commented on this column that I write and with great pride, I tell you that I am blessed to do so. Stay tuned.

Regards,
Joe Gagnon