Hello everyone,
I know all of our members (myself included!) clearly have a “thing” for electricity, given the nature of the website. As such, I thought I’d share some of my favorite electrical “horror stories” with you – whether I’ve heard about them or experienced them first-hand. Take your pick as to your favorite, and please feel free to share any of yours, too! I will number them to enable easy differentiation. This is going to probably look like a short novel when I’m done, but I have TONS to say here!
1. In our 1953 home (soon-to-be-fully-rewired but for now still has all of its original wiring, except for circuits added and/or extended over the years), we have plenty of electrical issues (hence why we’ll be fully rewiring). The issues are:
• A LOAD “NEUTRAL” conductor that functions by being grounded off of a COLD WATER PIPE (YES, REALLY!) Historically, whenever someone would flush the master bath toilet, it would occasionally cause a noticeable decrease in the fan noise of certain appliances; namely my HEPA air filter (which draws less than 1A max!)
• WAY overextended circuits – such as having half of the house fed off one circuit. For example, the kitchen circuit feeds not only virtually every kitchen receptacle and appliance (except the microwave, double-oven, and toaster), but also the washing machine in the garage AND all but ONE of the family room receptacles! The “living room” circuit also feeds our entire den/home office and half a bedroom!
• One circuit (the “living room” one) is run (and spliced) so far that if you try to run something high current (like a vacuum cleaner or space heater) on the outlet on the very “end of the line,” it struggles to operate due to the generated impedance/voltage loss. For example, a space heater that would usually heat up instantly may take up to 10 seconds to “fully” warm up, but it still won’t run as “powerfully”/fast as it should. This probably means it’s generating heat, too, and it is also one of the infamous “overfused” (20A breaker on 14-gauge wiring!) circuits. Needless to say, we are very careful as to what we run on certain lines…
• 20A breakers on 14-gauge wiring. Some are 14-gauge everywhere; others are a mix of 12 and 14 (probably because our 1953 home originally had a fuse box and some IDIOT put in a higher-rated fuse, and the person who later swapped the panel wasn’t paying any attention). Good ol’ fire hazard. And YES, the circuit with the plumbing-fed “neutral” has this same problem as the “cherry on top!”
• TONS of standard (non-GFCI) 3-prong receptacles on ungrounded wiring – probably the single-most common electrical issue in older homes.
• One time, an outlet behind the master bed started visually AND audibly arcing due to a loose terminal screw, which we fixed. Luckily the wall box was metal!
• The (current) main service panel isn’t even correctly grounded – all “grounding” consists of right now is a bare copper wire stuck into the soil outside, with neither a grounding rod nor cold water bond!
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Maybe now you’ll understand why we’re having the house re-wired this year, complete with a new service panel and grounding system?… 
2. At a VERY crappy rental house we once stayed at (for vacation), it had a VERY poor wiring system coupled with a fire-starter Zinsco panel (if you’re not familiar with “Zinsco woes,” a Google search will tell you everything pretty instantly!). Nevertheless, it made even sleeping there uncomfortable because:
• ALL receptacles in the dining room (and part of the living area) would become HOT to the touch if running a 1500W space heater at full output. This place was such a dump it didn’t even have central heating (it only had some crappy ‘70s/’80s electric baseboard heaters, which did jack). Nothing else was being run on the circuit at the time, and neither was anything even plugged in to the other (quite-literally “HOT!”) receptacles. I’m guessing the house either had crappy aluminum wiring (given the ‘70s nature of Zinsco panels AND aluminum wiring), and/or poorly-“stabbed” receptacles, as opposed to looping and fastening the wires AROUND the side-screw terminals. We thought this was going to start a fire!
• On the night we had a BBQ, we decided to (try to) use an electric (heating element type) charcoal starter we found in a cabinet, as opposed to the (charcoal-lighting) chimney. However, when plugged in, it didn’t even heat up enough to start glowing before the light on the outdoor deck/patio mysteriously went out. Upon checking the breakers, none of them had tripped, but the outlet on the deck, along with the light, would refuse to work. And, ~15 minutes later, the light mysteriously came back on again! As of now, through my research, I realized the electric panel was indeed a Zinsco (as I recalled the infamous small, multicolored handles), which was not only prone to breaker mechanism seizure, but also arcing/melting of the bad-quality aluminum busbar and breaker terminals! What I believe happened here is that when the (current-hungry) electric charcoal starter was plugged in, it heated the busbar for the respective breaker, causing the aluminum to contract (aluminum contracts when heated) and thus no longer maintained contact. It likely had prior, unseen arc damage or something. And then, once it “cooled down” again, the already half-scorched aluminum expanded just enough to make slight contact again – VERRRY NIIIICE!!
3. In the garage of my (sadly mentally-ill, hence why she never maintains things) grandmother’s townhouse, she had a rodent infestation, and the rats got behind the drywall and chewed all of the Romex around her electrical sub-panel. This meant live conductors were exposed in the walls (in places they shouldn’t be!), thus posing a massive fire hazard. She also stated that one night when she tried to plug in a small night-light, the outlet (which clearly had a loose connection) exploded with sparks and even generated a small flame, fully scorching it. And, of course, this STILL hasn’t been repaired!
4. In the detached garage of one of our good family friends, the husband (who ironically knows a lot about electronics/electrical principles) had “Macgyvered” a “wireless” motion sensor for the outdoor lights. What he had done was take a “screw-in” wireless motion sensor adapter (for, say, a table lamp or EXISTING outdoor incandescent fixture), cut off one end of the Romex for the outdoor lights, before splicing on a loose-hanging lamp socket to the “line” side and screwing in the wireless adapter. Next, he spliced the OTHER end of the Romex onto what looked like an SPT-1 lamp cord (complete with an electrical tape “seal”), before plugging that into a “screw-in” light socket adapter (AKA “Handy Outlet,” which he then proceeded to insert into the “bulb” side of the wireless sensor adapter! Talk about a “homeowner special” electrical-hackjob-fire-hazard-mess at its very best!
• This same person was powering a full-sized window AC unit by first plugging it into a 2-3 prong adapter with no grounding (a big no-no by itself), and THEN plugging it into a light-duty, 2-prong household extension cord! I’m surprised this didn’t melt.
5. Another one of our family friends, many years back, plugged a 1500W space heater into a light-duty extension cord, causing it to overheat so badly the heater’s plug not only melted, but FUSED itself into the extension cord!
• She stated to us recently (~10 years later) that she stopped using her bedroom space heater because “…the outlet had been loose for a while, and recently it got so hot it melted the plug and left a burn mark.” And no, she hasn’t had this fixed, as she doesn't quite have all her priorities in the "right place."
I think that’s it… I can’t wait to hear your take and/or personal experiences, and I hope you enjoyed!
