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An outlet in a hallway in our basement suddenly caught fire yesterday. I will be poking at it trying to find the cause this weekend, but I am hoping for ideas.
Outlet has been in that hallway for 15 years.
Installed by a professional electrician and inspected and approved.
Pretty sure that outlet has never been used. Nothing was plugged into it at the time.
Short and fire was all on the neutral side of the outlet/wires. The line side was not even warm. Wiring is fine.
Neutral side melted and caught fire. Did not trip the breaker (Breakers only protect the load side)
This happened fast. My daughter was down there in the morning and smelled nothing. Went down there in the afternoon and it was smoking.
There was a spider in the box. Could a spider have caused this?
At present I am uncertain what else may have been on the same circuit. I know there are several dehumidifiers downstairs that may or may not be on that circuit Otherwise I do not think anything else is plugged in, but I will be checking.
I will meter test the load side voltage and also check the neutral side wires to see if they have current.
Not sure what else to test.
Side issue. The box is melted and ruined. It is a new work box so nailed to the stud. Is there any way to get what is left of it out without removing the drywall?
Pretty sure that outlet has never been used. Nothing was plugged into it at the time.
Short and fire was all on the neutral side of the outlet/wires. The line side was not even warm. Wiring is fine. Neutral side melted and caught fire. Did not trip the breaker (Breakers only protect the load side)
...
At present I am uncertain what else may have been on the same circuit. I know there are several dehumidifiers downstairs that may or may not be on that circuit Otherwise I do not think anything else is plugged in, but I will be checking.
With nothing plugged into this specific outlet, and seeing two "white" wires in the picture, my best guess is that this outlet had a high-resistance connection on the neutral pass-through terminals and when the dehumidifiers downstream drew significant current, the bad connection heated up.
With nothing plugged into this specific outlet, and seeing two "white" wires in the picture, my best guess is that this outlet had a high-resistance connection on the neutral pass-through terminals and when the dehumidifiers downstream drew significant current, the bad connection heated up.
Thank you. I will learn more when I figure out which circuit the dehumidifiers were on. There are four outlet circuits in the basement any one of which might include the hallway outlets.
Odd that it would do this now. The dehumidifiers have been in their current locations for at least a couple of years. Maybe as much as ten years, but at least two. The loads on all the circuits down there are much lower as we have two bedrooms and a bathroom (plus the game room where the dehumidifiers are) that are no longer in regular use down there.
I had this happen at a house with AL wire. The outlet was above the kitchen counter, and when I turned on the coffee pot in another outlet, flame shot out of the unused outlet.
It happens that the flaming outlet was above the dishwasher. I suspect 30 years of vibrations exacerbated the AL wire connection becoming loose.
Common problem with AL wire, which has since been mitigated.
I had this happen at a house with AL wire. The outlet was above the kitchen counter, and when I turned on the coffee pot in another outlet, flame shot out of the unused outlet.
It happens that the flaming outlet was above the dishwasher. I suspect 30 years of vibrations exacerbated the AL wire connection becoming loose.
A common problem with AL wire, which has since been mitigated.
No. All copper. All 12 ga. This was installed 15 years ago (2006). I do not think they use aluminum anymore except for service entrance cable. We had some aluminum wire in a former house that had wiring from the 1940s or so, but it was only a problem where the Aluminum was attached to copper or other metals without the proper transition connection. Where the aluminum was left alone, it was fine, but where it had been connected to modern wire or devices it was a problem. We added the adaptor connectors and then it was fine.
But that is not the issue here. This is all new and all installed to modern standards and codes. (at least supposedly so).
With nothing plugged into this specific outlet, and seeing two "white" wires in the picture, my best guess is that this outlet had a high-resistance connection on the neutral pass-through terminals and when the dehumidifiers downstream drew significant current, the bad connection heated up.
A high resistance connection in a professionally installed and inspected outlet that has nothing plugged into it is merely the weakest chain in a link that should not exist.
12 gauge copper can handle a LOT of current, and that appears to be a screw down to a single terminal and not a stab. Such a melt is not supposed to happen, especially on the neutral side.
IMO, you need to get an experienced electrician out there to do a complete opening up of boxes and inspect.
The simplest possibility would be two circuits from the same leg that somehow got ganged onto a single neutral return. Possibilities get worse from there. The neutral buss in the main box might be loose and/or currents from unbalanced loads somehow creating a "hot" neutral. The house ground may be damaged.
In all seriousness, I know a lot about how all this stuff works, but even I would be hiring an experienced pro to work on the diagnosis and repair. What you see is a symptom, NOT the core problem.
I showed this to an electrical engineer at work (QC guy). He did not want to guess at possible causes but told me what to test. He asked to keep the outlet to use for show and tell. He said he has never seen anything like that, and he has overseen billions of dollars of electrical work.
I do not need to hire an electrician to open the boxes and inspect. I can do that as well as testing for problems. If I cannot determine what the test results mean or find the problem, I will continue to rely on multiple persons (including ideas from CD people here) to help with suggestions of possible causes to test and eliminate (Thank you all for those).
It was a licensed experienced electrical contractor who created this problem (and others) or more likely some of the flunkies he had doing the work supposedly under his supervision. They wired the new parts of the house and I wired the old parts. According to the inspector, I did a much better job (also according to his correction notes - I had about a quarter as many corrections as they did, and I did twice as much wiring). They rush too much and rely on inexperienced underlings too much. In any event no one is available to do anything until next year (meaning 2023). Every home improvement professional is short on workers and heavy on jobs. I have been trying to get someone for some larger projects for over a year now.
If necessary, I will get my brother involved. He knows 100X about electrical issues compared to most licensed electricians. He is a genius and electrical wiring is his passion. He studies it nonstop in his spare time, and he was a licensed contractor for a while - a genius but a terrible businessman. He has also spent many years as the maintenance chief for various small factories. Only issue there is he talks for four hours for every hour of work, plus it sometimes takes weeks to get ahold of him. I have been trying to reach him about this, but he does not answer his cell phone or respond to messages. I should be able to ask him about this at Christmas if I am not able to get him sooner, but I would like to get this resolved before then. For now, the power to the basement is shut off.
I will do some testing today and see what I can learn. With any luck, it was simply wired incorrectly. That would be the easiest thing to find and fix. However it is puzzling to everyone I talk to why this would sit for 15 years and suddenly catch fire in a matter of hours with nothing changing.
1) the socket could have been loose enough that it slid over and the bare-screws shorted out on the grounded metal case?
(possibly mis-wired with HOT wire on neutral side of plug?? a short to case only possible with HOT wire side!)
2) what brand breaker box do you have? Federated?? Breaker should have tripped loooooong before any metal box would have melted!
I'd be really worried about what brand of breakers/panel you have!! On the recalled list??
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What else is on the same circuit breaker?
