Why deliberately shorting equipment to blow breakers might be a bad idea . . .

Some would argue NO GOOD in a residential environment. Consider a 15 amp circuit in a 30 year old home, that has never been tripped in 30 years. Now someone plugs in a faulty space heater and it overloads the circuit, but the breaker doesn't trip ! Don't think this can't happen.

This is one of the reason I like fuses. They trip no matter what age they are.

When they first used circuit breakers they were exclusive to commercial installations. In fact many were used for lighting and acted as the switch for the lights. The maintenance man went around each evening and turned off the breakers to shut down the lights. This amounted to "exercising" the breakers and likely kept them mechanically sound.

Breakers can also be "welded" - something you would never find in a fuse.

There are also different grades of circuit breakeres and you can bet builders aren't using the top-of-the-line in residential construction.

The fire we are talking about was a residential care facility, but if you saw the before pictures you would realize it was nothing more than an old wood building. Many parts of rural Missouri lack any type of building codes.

Again, these are just my personal opinions, YMMV.

Under normal conditions, the breaker trips before any equipment damage is done. These may have been defective breakers.

That, or the now famous FPE, Federal Pacific Electric. Noted for not tripping.

Sounds like untested hypothesis used to fuel conjecture. (See below ;-)

Quote: "The wiring MAY have become overloaded" hence "blow[ing] breakers MIGHT be a bad idea (my emphasis).

A literal reading of the NYTimes article does _not_ indicate that the fire was shown to be caused by tripping a breaker in my opinion. The information provided is insufficient to know what actually happened. I'd need much better information before making any inferences from this vague description.

" The Nov. 27 fire at the Anderson Guest House started in the attic and swept through the one-story building. State fire officials cited an electrical short or overload as a possible cause. "

"The facility had been cited for failing to conduct an annual fire inspection in 2000, but had not been cited for fire problems in more recent years. The three other facilities run by the same company all had received fire safety citations since 2003."

Based on only the information provided, it is possible that _nothing_ that the worker did had _anything_ to do with starting the fire -- much less popping the breakers. The furnace (which is itself a mechanism for creating fire) was broken _before_ he started and the article is mute on even whether that was fixed.

Or the worker may have jumped or shorted out a furnace component such as an SCR, and _also_ popped the breaker with the latter having nothing whatever to do with causing the fire.

If the worker shorted out or interconnected components or wires in an electromechanical system, even temporarily, he may have damaged something creating the hazard in that way. He was, it is written, trying to repair a furnace, which has motors and relays and sensors and burners that themselves create fire.

I recently discovered that the single control on my downstairs heating system that turns the burners off if the boiler gets too hot is a single thermostatic mercury switch on the hot water pipe leaving the boiler. If the circulation pump were to fail AND the mercury switch failed, the gas burners would _never_ turn off because the thermostat would continue to call for heat and the 80,000 BTUs produced by the boiler would not be removed by circulating the water so the house wouldn't heat.

Moreover, the circulating water goes only to a heat exchanger in the air handler. So a similar problem could be created if the multi-stage thermostat (heat pump, boiler, or heat pump + boiler) was inappropriately programmed and the lone thermostatic switch failed. I discovered during the programming of a communicating two-stage heating thermostat that in one possible mode, the only thing between normal temperatures and an overheated boiler *was* that single heat-actuated switch! (I've added a second switch to my own setup as is required -- I've been told -- by commercial at least some residential codes .)

So if the existing problem the worker was trying to fix was (eg) a bad pump, and the added problem he caused (or not) was stuck overtemperature switch, the combination (as in my case) could itself cause a fire -- especially if such a system were in an attic (as in the case cited) surrounded by squirrel nests or leaves or stored items or other flammable items. Or not ;-)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

[snip]

[snip]

I recently had an electrician replace a standard switch (in a dual gang box) with an Insteon switch. (My left arm/hand have reached the point of near uselessness, my left leg sometimes withraws support without warning and the switch was adjacent to the kitchen sink so I decided it was safer to seek the help of a pro.)

When he found there were multiple power sources in the box by blowing two fuses, I made a caustic comment which, surprisingly, did not increase the invoice amount.

He said multiple sources in one box is against code but, as I'm not an NEC expert, I cannot confirm this. Anyway, the building is 60+ years old so it may have been legit when built. (Our resident Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jibe, aka Local Village Idiot, will probably comment, especially if he has again skipped today's dose of lithium carbonate as he so often does.)

snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com

Last I heard they had pretty much decided that it will be impossible to determine the cause of the fire. There's no doubt that service done just prior to the fire will always be suspect. About 10 months ago a Chinese restaurant near me had a small fire just before closing. The fire department came and put out the small fire and told the owners to go home. About an hour later another fire was called in and the building was a total loss. Seems the fire department didn't do a very good job of checking and a small undetected fire in the duct was the cause of the more serious fire.

After a recent storm in my area there were numerous dumpsters in my neighborhood. One was filled half full with damp to wet roll insulation. Apparently someone threw a cigarette or something hot into the dumpster and started this insulation burning. I don't believe it ever really grew into flames, but it smoldered all night and when we came back in the morning the paint was totally burned off the dumpster from the heat. The insulation was still smolderng and putting out a lot of smoke, but no flame. Prior to this I had been under the assumption that insulation was sort of fire resistant - guess not.

I have been a office machine service tech my entire adult life since

1975, we are trained to test by overloading etc all resettable safety devices so we know they work when needed

I've read a number of online news reports aqbout the Anderson group home fire. I didn't find anything about an electrician having shorted anything. Do you know a link to this information? Absent that, I wonder if this isn't part fact (the fire certainly did occur) and part modern urban legend.

I didn't find anything about an electrician having

wonder if this isn't part fact (the fire certainly did

"The worker told investigators that he did not know which circuit breaker operated the furnace and that he deliberately tripped the system, according to a report from the Missouri Fire Safety Division."

It would be stupid. This thread is a testament to that.

The URL requires a login. Thanks for posting the quote.

is handy for working around those.

Nurse, where does that vein come from?

I don't know doctor, lets tie it off and see what artery pops.

Cool, it will save us a lot of time.

I thought that was standard operating procedure. After four months of chemo I thought they'd found and ruined every vein I have but they always managed to find someplace else to shove that blasted catheter.

Not as stupid as buying the house, plugging in a space heater, and going to bed.

No wonder my fuse-tester isn't working right!