The other night Peg and I were laying in bed when we heard a loud, weird buzzing hissing sound. I jumped out of bed and opened the fron door to find our porch light filled with smoke. I turned the switch off and took the glass bowl off to find this (see above picture with handy directional arrow). The wires in the long tube had shorted out, melting the insulation on the wires and burning a hole right through the metal tube. Makes me nervous. Isn't this how some house fires (ask Mom and Dad) start? This is the only fixture of this type we have but we have others from the same manufacturer (bought at Home Depot, sorry Gilbert!).Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Bzzzzzzzt!!!
The other night Peg and I were laying in bed when we heard a loud, weird buzzing hissing sound. I jumped out of bed and opened the fron door to find our porch light filled with smoke. I turned the switch off and took the glass bowl off to find this (see above picture with handy directional arrow). The wires in the long tube had shorted out, melting the insulation on the wires and burning a hole right through the metal tube. Makes me nervous. Isn't this how some house fires (ask Mom and Dad) start? This is the only fixture of this type we have but we have others from the same manufacturer (bought at Home Depot, sorry Gilbert!).
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Hmmm. Just a little tip from an electrician: Breakers and fuses, when they get older, go bad. Some people (fuse and breaker companies) say that they don't, but I've seen enough in my apprenticeship to know that they do go bad, or just stop working completely. From what it looks like, that was a direct short (power wire to a grounded metal fixture) and your breaker or fuse SHOULD'VE caught it and tripped. I don't know how old your house (or fuses/breakers) are, but even some of the ones I've installed straight out of the box didn't work properly. I'd say 5% would be a rough estimate. I'd find the breaker/fuse responsible for that circuit and replace it, because you were right in thinking that this is how most house fires start: Bad breakers/fuses. Call me if you need help identifying your specific breaker/fuse type or have any questions. 435 592 5199---Josh
Josh, I thought about the breaker and was wondering why it didn't trip. It might be an old one, put in when we built 20 years ago. We remodeled a couple of years ago and added more circuits when we did so. This was probably an original breaker. I'll pick up a new one. Thanks for the tip.
I automatically thought that you must be following in Mom and Dad's footsteps. Not sure they are the ones you want to be in but sure glad you were awake and heard the pop and that everything turned out ok!
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