General > General Technical Chat
Termites could burn your house down
TerraHertz:
Here's an example of that almost happening.
Yesterday my (very) old mum phoned me and said a bathroom light had come on by itself for a while, then gone off, and doesn't work now.
Today I went round there to have a look.
It's a softwood timber frame house, and that bathroom has western red cedar wall paneling. I noticed a strong burning smell.
Flicked the light switch, and can feel there's something mechanically wrong with it, but the light does turn on and off.
Turned off the lights power at the meter board then pulled the switch out of the door framing.
Urrgh. There's a recent termite invasion, and they made a nest in the switch cavity. Their nest building material is apparently somewhat conductive. It resistively heated up with the 240VAC current, and started a slow burn-back of the wiring insulation. That had gone about 4 inches back up the wiring, through the woodwork. It was all still warm to the touch, and the timber is charred.
The fuse (old style wire, not circuit breaker) didn't blow. Would have been better if it had. An earth leakage breaker wouldn't have helped with this.
Quite a close call I think.
Edit to add: Speaking of termites, what's with the bug in the photo upload selections? The photo you specify first, appears as the last one in the page, though the others are all in correct order. To get them ordered right here, I had to specify 4473 twice, then delete the "first" one (appearing as the last one.)
Cubdriver:
:wtf: :o :o :o :o :o
Holy crap!!! That might not have ended will! Good thing you caught it when you did!
Edit to add - I'm surprised to see that the switch appears to be set directly into the wood, with no box of any sort.
-Pat
Zucca:
Your guardian Angel is strong.
sokoloff:
Good find.
This is the type of thing that arc fault interrupter circuit breakers are meant to address.
SeanB:
Probably a very old installation, and grandfathered into the modern regulations, as there pretty is nothing about having to upgrade all installations electrically as the regulations change, only that it must comply to the regulations applicable when built, and that anything that is done repair wise must be like for like, otherwise it is an "upgrade" and the upgrade must comply with current regulations.
Thus here you find a house that is a century old, and which has been in the same family for that time, and thus still has the original fuse box with wire fuses in it, fuse wire on a card for the replacement of them, and gutta percha wire though the house. Still complies, till you want to change a plug outlet, because 5A socket outlets are pretty rare, nothing easy to find plugs for, and the bakelite has disintegrated. Then you have to pull in new cabling to the distribution board (and find the @#$%^ sparkie cut cost, because he only pulled in a new red live wire instead of pulling in new line, neutral and an earth conductor), put in a new distribution board with mains isolator, earth leakage and 20A breaker, fed from the old board as a sub board, to get the installation to comply with the modern regulations. Then you find the bonding on the water pipes has failed, the grounding at the meter has rotted away, and the only ground the system has is the rather dodgy wire on the overhead 3 wire feeder that leads to the light pole outside, original to the house 90 years ago, and , as it falls on the boundary, is not checked by home owners, and ignored by the Metro electricians unless the wires have all fallen off.
Biggest shock on selling the house is the electrical compliance, as often you then have to replace everything to get it up to code, as the act of checking the wiring inside the sockets, switches and lights is often enough to cause the brittle insulation to turn to powder.
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