Stove Recalls and the Ticking Clocks Under Our Streets

We spend a lot of time worrying about roofs and foundations. But sometimes the biggest threat to your home is a bumped stove knob or a pipe buried down the street. Between a new kitchen appliance recall and a spectacular plumbing failure in California, it's a good week to check your surroundings.

When a bump in the kitchen turns dangerous

Best Buy is pulling the emergency brake on a batch of Insignia gas ranges. The issue is annoyingly common. The front-mounted knobs are just too easy to turn by accident. Brush past them while cooking, or let a curious dog counter-surf, and you could start an unintended fire.

USA Today reports just one case of accidental contact and no actual injuries. Still, Best Buy isn't taking chances. If you bought a stainless steel Insignia range recently, check the sticker inside your bottom drawer for model NS-RGFGSS1 or NS-RGFCGS2. The company will send you free knob covers to fix the problem so you don't have to replace the whole stove.

The 150-year plumbing problem

Meanwhile in Southern California, homeowners are getting a messy look at what happens when city infrastructure ages out. A massive riveted steel pipe recently burst in West Hollywood. It swallowed cars in sinkholes and flooded the street.

Municipal plumbing is a ticking clock. Steel lines are generally meant to last a few decades. But CBS News reports that Los Angeles operates on a 150-year replacement plan. The city manages a sprawling underground network and replaces a tiny fraction of it annually. The math is brutal. A huge chunk of the area's main water lines operate far past their expiration dates.

You might wonder why these dramatic geysers always seem to happen in the dead of night. It's simple physics. When everyone goes to sleep and stops running their taps, system pressure spikes. That pressure finds the weakest link in those century-old pipes. This is an old headache for the city. A similar rupture near UCLA a decade ago caused massive flooding and millions in damage. Mayor Karen Bass says some city water channels date back two centuries. Now, voters will see proposed charter changes on the November ballot to try and finally get ahead of the crumbling grid.