kaiser715
Doing hard time
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2006
- Location
- 7, Pocket, NC
Anybody have anything break down/burn out/burn up today??
At 2:29 today -- Monday -- (according to my cell phone call log), I got a call from a client whose server was down. (More on that later). As I was headed that way my mom called (at 2:32), and said the house was full of smoke, and she was pretty sure it was the (electric) water heater. As it happened, I was about only 2 blocks away from her house, so I told her to hold off a minute on the fire dept and I'd be right there. Got there, and sure enough, it was the water heater. The house was filled upstairs and down with a hazy smoke.
I pulled the fuse plug (insert w/2 30a cartridge fuses) for the HWH, and checked it out...it was smoked up one side and still hot to the touch. I pulled the 2 thermostat covers off, and all the wires were bare, insulation burned off of all the visible wire, and the insulation had gotten pretty hot and charred. There was no sign of shorting against the cover or outer shell. The fuses were not blown, so I'm sure there wasn't a direct short...I'm thinking more of an over voltage. (Up until a few months ago, I had a power monitor hooked to one of my unix machines...wish I had that now.)
So anyway, then it's off to Lowe's to meet a friend that was to help swap in a new heater. I stop by the client that called with the server down...the UPS backup was fried, but the server came back up.
Back at the house, my friends wife calls, she had gotten home, and their house smelled "funny". A little investigation and a couple of phone calls later the smell is ID'd as smoke, probably the same acrid smell of the burnt wire insulation we had, she says she figured out that the oven is the culprit.
Mom's place is over near Riverbirch, my friend is out near plank road, the client is near the courthouse, so they are pretty well spread out. But I believe there is no such thing as a "coincidence".
Sooooo..... Think ol' Progress Energy sent a little surge or spike to us down here? Anybody else have a problem today?
BTW, burnt curbside water heaters last exactly 7 minutes here. I carted it to the curb, a few minutes later my mom tells me there's a guy stopped to look at it...I look out the window, and he and the HWH are already gone.
At 2:29 today -- Monday -- (according to my cell phone call log), I got a call from a client whose server was down. (More on that later). As I was headed that way my mom called (at 2:32), and said the house was full of smoke, and she was pretty sure it was the (electric) water heater. As it happened, I was about only 2 blocks away from her house, so I told her to hold off a minute on the fire dept and I'd be right there. Got there, and sure enough, it was the water heater. The house was filled upstairs and down with a hazy smoke.
I pulled the fuse plug (insert w/2 30a cartridge fuses) for the HWH, and checked it out...it was smoked up one side and still hot to the touch. I pulled the 2 thermostat covers off, and all the wires were bare, insulation burned off of all the visible wire, and the insulation had gotten pretty hot and charred. There was no sign of shorting against the cover or outer shell. The fuses were not blown, so I'm sure there wasn't a direct short...I'm thinking more of an over voltage. (Up until a few months ago, I had a power monitor hooked to one of my unix machines...wish I had that now.)
So anyway, then it's off to Lowe's to meet a friend that was to help swap in a new heater. I stop by the client that called with the server down...the UPS backup was fried, but the server came back up.
Back at the house, my friends wife calls, she had gotten home, and their house smelled "funny". A little investigation and a couple of phone calls later the smell is ID'd as smoke, probably the same acrid smell of the burnt wire insulation we had, she says she figured out that the oven is the culprit.
Mom's place is over near Riverbirch, my friend is out near plank road, the client is near the courthouse, so they are pretty well spread out. But I believe there is no such thing as a "coincidence".
Sooooo..... Think ol' Progress Energy sent a little surge or spike to us down here? Anybody else have a problem today?
BTW, burnt curbside water heaters last exactly 7 minutes here. I carted it to the curb, a few minutes later my mom tells me there's a guy stopped to look at it...I look out the window, and he and the HWH are already gone.
