That's frightening. A neighbor's home burned down about 15 years ago, traced it to a faulty outlet in their living room. Good reminder to pay your home insurance,right?

Oh my gosh... and in the house I owned with the ex, the breaker box was in the closet. Lots of easy flammable stuff in there....

Thanks for the warning. Guess it is best, to have someone check for loose wiring ever so often.

Moni

This is probably why breaker boxes have to be outside the house here.

That is just too scary.....lots of flammable stuff near mine. Thanks for the heads-up.....I'll do some "stuff" removal, as the box is in my "dungeon", a little storage room on my back porch.

Whoa!! I really need to have my electric checked. I know there are a lot of old wires in there, although I've had many upgraded. That is really scary.

Mine is inside a kitchen cabinet. There are definitely flammable things nearby.

We had some thing very similar happen a few days ago. It was an outlet in the living room, I smelled burning wires but could never find the source, then my cleaning lady told me that outlet had black on it and she was scared of it. I showed my husband and as we were looking at it sparks were visible all around the holes. I called the electrician, he pulled out the plug and it was completely burnt, crumbling apart and all inside the box was burned.
I was shaking it scared me so bad.

We have some aluminum wire in this house and it is susceptible to getting hot if the wires get loose or if it was wired improperly to copper.

We plan on having the whole house rewired, huge cost, but the dangers worry me.

Our panel here is outside there are dangers to that to, if someone wants to break in all they have to do is open the panel door and flip off all power, then you would have no light, and in many cases no phone definitely a disadvantage. Also where ours is it would take a person a
good few minutes to run out there to turn off the power in an emergency.

The outside boxes here can be lockable so less vulnerable to being switched off by casual burglars. Also by law they have to have a special switch (can't remember the name right now :-) ) that turns off all the power instantly if something overloads a circuit, such as a faulty appliance or someone accidentally (or deliberately) electrocuting themself.

yes they can be locked but if you needed to access it to quickly turn it off that would even delay it more finding the key or opening the combination.

The reason I am so freaky about the panels, I as a very small child took (for some unknown reason) a hair pen and a key and placed one in each hole of a socket, I was electrocuted and an actual fire started in the wall, my father ran in to find me still attached of course and so he could not touch me, THANK GOD the panel happened to be in that room, he quickly got to it turned off the main power breaker so every thing was cut off. I was was not breathing and my heart was stopped, he started cpr and respirations immediately, we lived way out in the country and there were no ambulances, so he brought me back and they drove me to the hospital, I am alive today! I had some bad burns of course but I remember every single minute of it just like it happened yesterday.
Shock and electrocution are quite sensitive issues to me. LOL
In fact I almost refused to buy this house because I knew it had aluminum wire in part of it but after reading up on it found it was not as bad as I thought.

If you had a picture of the inside of the box, I could make a better asessment of what happened.

Whatever, the root cause, an arc got started and engaged the door. That may look like something that cooked for awhile, but I have seen tests and know that this amount of damage can be done in a fraction of a second to a couple of seconds. The main breaker should have tripped - maybe that was component that failed. An arc of that magnitude should have blown the fuses at the distrubution transformer. This may have been the component that stopped the arc. This is on a pole feeding the service entrance wires, or it would be inside a pedastal box at ground level for underground distribution wires.

A failure like this can be triggered by a lightening hit, or it can be due to failed connections. Sometimes, it is a bad breaker. If a breaker has been tripped due to a heavy short, most manufacturers state that the breaker should be replaced. The insulation quality inside a breaker may be compromised after opening in a big short. It could have sustained arc and heat damage to metal parts, espacially the bi-metal parts that control tripping on overloads lasting more than a few seconds.

Very likely, the main breakers should be replaced. In fact, if the backside of the box is damaged, the entire box and breaker set should be replaced.

Aluminum wire is problematic. After installation, the wire can creep loosening in the connector and then heating. Anytime aluminum wire is connected to a breaker, the wire lug should be re-tightend a week later. Also, the connector must have been tested and approved for use with aluminum wire. Disaster may happen if an aluminum wire is connected to a lug qualified for copper only.

How are they doing Gazania?

I am really anal about electricity, it scares the crap out of me. I had a client that runs an electrical contracting business and for years I had her check the panel and outlets, especially the outside boxes that run the pool, tub and ponds. I still have it done regularly, it makes me so nervous. It is the best $150 bucks I spent each year. My neighbor is an electrician so now he does it for us, it does help set me at ease.

jendandy, the insurance agent/inspector took the box. I understand that there was not much left inside it. The problem started at the top of it and burned down through, of course causing a lot of noise and light flashing, scareing the young mother out of her wits. An inspection tag and was still attached to the top of the box from it's last inspection in 2003 when this family bought the place.

The family was moved into a motel for a week while a new box was installed and rewired. Plus all contents of the house had to be cleaned etc to remove all contaminents from the electrical burn.

Lynn, Mom and the two kids and dogs are back at home now and doing fine.

If you had had a residual current device (remembered what it was called), Ravencajun, your father wouldn't have had to open the breaker box as it would have switched off the electricity milliseconds after you stuck anything in the socket and well before your heart stopped. They have been mandatory in all new homes since 1991 and also in remodelled homes where wiring has been replaced, or the electricity authority won't connect power to your home.

Here is a link that might be useful: Residual current device

2 years ago the PUD replaced some older deteriorating poles in our neighborhood and relocated some, causing them to change locations of the PUD hookups on houses themselves. One of their electricians told my neighbor when doing work there, when there is a fire originating in an electrical panel in older neighborhoods, it will almost always be the older breaker boxes made by Zinsco. She has one. I have one. So does the neighbor behind us. Must have been common, our homes are vintage but not identical ages (my own is oldest), and none were built by the same person.

Back in the dark ages when I was a toddler there was no such thing as residual current devices unfortunately! It is great that they have them now but my current home was built in 72 so that is one reason I worry. We did have all checked to make sure they had used the proper alum/copper connections and outlets before we purchased the house. The outlet that burnt up was the proper type, but apparently the wires that hooked to the screw terminals had gotten loose over time. We were told anytime using a merret to be sure to use the proper type for alum to copper and to always use a special "grease" on the wires to prevent them from oxidizing.
He told us if we have any outlets that are loose, move if you try to pull the cord out of them then by all means have them looked at and make sure every thing is tight because every time that outlet is jiggled when loose it causes those wires to get a little bit looser and that will cause them to heat up. We did have several that were a little loose so all of those have been addressed.

The interesting thing is all the main power that comes into our homes comes in on aluminum wire.