
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.