Electronics > Beginners
Holy smoke!
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najrao:
Has gone downstairs for coffee, and returned to my work room. Was about to quit this too, but chanced to glance at a frightful fire on the wall just a metre away. Turned off the big 20A double pole switch adjacent, and blew out the smoky flame.

What went up literally in smoke was a creation of mine of some five years ago. It has -- had --  a time interval set  relay to turn off the electric heater in the solar tank. This contraption was a device I had made up to prevent a forgotten heater-on from running up huge bills.

That it could have happened another time and gone unnoticed is what shakes the sh*t out of me. There was no high current, and none of the three overcurrent breakers upstream took cognizance.

Yes, it was a Rifa X2 capacitor. To think Rifa was my sole choice for X2 when I was a designer at our electronics manufacturing unit! There must be tens of thousands of them I have seeded all over the country.

You can never be too careful with mains electricity.

NaxFM:
I remember those infamous capacitors from Dave's teardown...
Guess I'm right to spend a few euros to replace all the "dangerous" capacitors in old products...

Edit:
Wow, that was really a catastrophic failure, there was nothing flammable near it, so maybe, apart the burnt wall, nothing bad would have happened, I guess.
But I reckon that a big uncontrolled flame in your house must not have been a very pleasant experience...
That demonstrates perfectly the importance of compliant flame retardant electrical sockets
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