A few years ago, the ancient (circa 1998) microwave in my house failed. I merrily trundled off to the local appliance store and bought a new one, and had them install it. Seemed to work, but eventually I realized it must be drawing too much electricity. Like something out of Green Acres, I had to limit what lights and other appliances were on in the kitchen if I wanted to use the microwave.

I had an electrician come out and look at it. He opined that, due to the way the house was wired, it would be a pretty major undertaking to fix the underlying problem. So I just went along with turning lights off when I cooked.

I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner.

The only place I could find that still sold a microwave so old and feeble that it wouldn't overload my circuit, was Sears.

Thank you Sears! Hopefully I will never need that again, but I am thankful for your help.

> I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner.

As someone who's had his share of problems passed on to him when buying a house, I'd like to know (1) how the next owner found out about the problem and (2) how they managed to strong-arm you into fixing it.

I told my selling realtor about the problem before they house was ever shown to anyone, and agreed to fix it before moving out. It would have been wrong of me to have just left a problem like that.

I'm curious, do you remember what the difference in power draw between the old and new microwaves was?

Standard microwaves are 1100 watt, but there are also 700 watt microwaves. Those extra 3 amps must have set off his circuit breaker.

Sounds about right. Also, this was an above-stove unit, limiting possible choices. Probably could have more easily found a standalone unit that worked.

Especially if it was an odd size. The downside to built-in microwaves is that it took many years for the industry to decide on what sizes they would support, so older installs are always a crapshoot. If you have a weird one it can be hell finding an appropriate microwave. My parents had a very old microwave (1980s era) built into their house that was much bigger than almost everything on the market today, finding a replacement for it was impossible, they ended up having to buy a smaller one and making a custom shim to fit it in the old cavity.

All my major appliances were bought online. Amazon delivers home improvement services now (via partners) in some markets. These may be things that move online slower, but they to move.