Results of the house fire

MXracn746 said:
I'm the original owner, and when I moved in, I put a work bench in the back of the garage with one of those 2 light florescent shop lights above it. I put in an electrical socket to plug the shop light into. That socket shorted out. The detective and fire chief said it happened before the breaker had a chance to pop. Said it got so hot showed me the contacts literally melted and turned to molten little beads of material. He said it probably shot a blue flame out, down on my workbench. He showed me where it blew out and the hot spot where it all started. That socket had been there for 21 years untouched. .
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Something that is not commonly known is that electric panel circuit breakers can go bad over time. Even on a panel as new as a few years old. A simple way to help prevent this is to periodically exercise the circuit breakers.
Simple enough to do, you just unload the breaker as much as you can, by turning off any and all loads that it feeds, and then simply flip the breaker off, and back on a couple of times. And this includes the main breaker in the panel. But remember, it's important to unload the breaker first. It's also a good practice to stand off to the side when tripping or resetting circuit breakers in case of an arc flash incident which is always possible.

Circuit breakers are electro-mechanical devices and most contain some form of electrical contact grease in them to lube the moving parts. Parts will stick, and grease will go bad if not exercised. Seen this many times over the years.

Also another common issue is having boxes and electrical devices, such as receptacles or switch's without the wall plate cover's installed. Or even electric panels left with the panel covers removed. These plate covers aren't just for cosmetic finished appearances. They help contain the chaos that is created behind it when s**t shorts out. Short circuits and arc flash incidences are nasty business.

Sorry for your loss's man, hate seeing this happen to anybody. My mom's house burned to the ground about 30 years ago due to a defective water bed thermostat that overheated an outlet. Always an ugly situation.
 
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