Fire!!!!!

[aaron]

Well, i had a bit of a "situation" last night.
At about 11 last night just after i had gone to bed the whole living room lit up like daytime and it sounded like someone was arc welding in my living room. It lasted for about a minute and by the time i jumped out of bed it had all gone dark again and I could hear the water in the tank syphoning back into the sump.
I turned the light on and there was thick white smoke pouring out of the tank stand. i opened the doors and the powerboard that was in there was on fire.
I disconnected the power and put the fire out then started to investigate.
Everything was black with soot but it would seem that i had used a very cheap double adapter and with a little bit of condensation was all it needed to short out and the adapter and the rubber around the pins caught fire.
The craziest thing is that the brass pins from the pump plug seem to have totally vapourised, they are just gone.
Fortunately it seems that no electricity leaked into the tank and everything seems OK. I am currently running skimmerless until i can resolve a neater power solution to plug everything back in. and i need to buy a new feeder pump for the skimmer.
I'm just really thankful that (A) I was home and not away from home at the time and (B) all the livestock seems to have survived.
I will post some nice charred pictures when th camera battery is charged

 

[nanoreefer22]

Damn Aaron, at least everythings ok. Will be waiting for the pics.

 

[aaron]

Now that everything is Ok i feel like the photo's were a little disappointing. there's some nice charring and melting but ......
The smoke at the time was very impressive though.
The hardest thing was convincing myself that i had delt with everything and it wasnt going to start again after i had fallen asleep.

 

[Quang]

Geez Aaron, that's pretty crazy. Good thing you got it under control.

 

[bad coffee]

Good news that you were home! Sorry to hear about the small fire. Let us know if you need anything.

B

 

[FRY]

aaron lucky that you were home to catch the fire, if you want i can give you wiremold plugmold strip

 

[aaron]

What exactly is that Fry? pardon my ignorance.

Here's the pics, doesnt seem that dangerous now, but at 11 last night it was a different story

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

Good that you are ok.

Well looks like you should put that EQ in my thread about EQ safety so that other members would not fall for the same.

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum...15626-equipment-safety-thread-avoid-list.html

 

[herman]

Good thing that you are your tank are okay. Let us know if there is anything we can do man!

 

[FRY]

http://www.wiremold.com/shared_content/pdf/ed1412.pdf

 

[tomzpc]

yikes...scary stuff. Thank God it didn't go beyond that. Good save.

 

[noodleman]

wow lucky you were home, but out of interest how did you put out the fire since it was all electrical?

 

[jhale]

that's very scary Aaron.
I'm glad that your okay, and that it happened when you were
there to deal with it.
I was thinking last night how crazy it is that we mix so much elecrtrical
equipment so close to salt water.
I'm curious if you had installed gfci outlets for the tank?

 

[reefman]

a humid enclosed cabinet with electrical wires will surely mean diseaster. make sure there is enough vent drawing air out. on humid hot days or damp rainy days, i make sure my cabinet doors r open. it would also be a good practice to open ur cabinet doors when no one is home.

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

that's very scary Aaron.
I was thinking last night how crazy it is that we mix so much elecrtrical
equipment so close to salt water.

I am 100% agreeing that. When I see most member's system in the tank thread(sometimes including myself when I got lazy) or the gallery have all the sockets underneath the tank and yet not one one pic so far indicated that we have think much about the safety issue. It's simply not safe to have sockets under a tank and inside a wooden stand!

 

[jhale]

I am 100% agreeing that. When I see most member's system in the tank thread(sometimes including myself when I got lazy) or the gallery have all the sockets underneath the tank and yet not one one pic so far indicated that we have think much about the safety issue. It's simply not safe to have sockets under a tank and inside a wooden stand!

my tanks electrical system is in the stand, but it's separate from any wet areas. the only way water could reach it is if the tank above broke. There would be bigger problems then. electrical safety should be practiced by everyone here. I know aaron knows what he's doing, so I'm not preaching to him. I have gfci outlets that my DJ power strips are hooked into. This plus all outlets and plugs are protected from water makes me feel safe that I won't experience any fires. For the worst case scenario there is a sprinkler head sitting directly over the tank.

 

[masterswimmer]

Aaron, that's some scarey $hit. Very glad to hear you're ok. We've been experiencing a lot of 'warnings' in the club this summer. I hope this is the last of them.

swimmer

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

I know aaron knows what he's doing, so I'm not preaching to him.

Me not preaching to him neither, I have confident in him knowing his stuff too. I just want to raise everybody's awareness of equipement safety. A completely sealed rio powerhead could explode what else would not happened???!!???

 

[aaron]

OK here's the deal, I installed a GFIC on the outlet which "popped" one night for no aparent reason, when i tried to install a new one i couldnt get it to test OK so i had to plug everything on that circuit into a non protected circuit just to keep the tank running. (a number of you may remember i posted looking for an electrician) anyway, i hadnt had time to deal with the seemingly faulty outlet and while everythings going OK its easy to forget.
I have been thinking for a while about moving all electrical out of the stand and putting it someplace else but its hard as most equipment cords are a little too short to give you much placement flexibility.
I am changing out my return pump tomorrow and am trying to think of ways to cut down on the amount of powered things in the tank - like feeding the skimmer by T-ing off the drain line then running the skimmer outflow through the phosban and charcoal reactors.

 

[aaron]

The other thing is, i'm glad this happened to me here and not in Australia where i would have had to deal with 240 volts of aquarium frying power

Noodleman, as far as putting the fire out, luckily when I pulled the plug most of the big blue flames died down and I could smother the rest of it with a towel.