Fire in the Hole!

Yesterday was far too exciting.  Both for me and Marty, the alarm system installer.  (Yes, those are new holes in the wall to the left of the door...)

Things were moving along pretty smoothly and for the most part he was able to use existing holes to run wires, etc.

Until it came time to run power to the control panel.

He'd drilled a hole in the hallway side of this wall and was using a "wet noodle" to fish a wire down to the outlet on the kitchen side of the wall.

I was sitting at the kitchen table and saw a flash just before I heard Marty say, "Uh oh!"

That's never good...

We both ran to the hallway, looked through the 1-inch hole, and saw flames licking up the stud cavity.

He ran out to his truck, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and started squirting in the hole from the hall-side and then from the kitchen side past the outlet into the wall.  Meanwhile, I ran down to the basement and started turning off all the kitchen breakers.  On the way back up I grabbed a hammer, pry bar, drywall saw, and a shop light.

We didn't see any more flames, so plugged in the shop light to check the outlet's power before opening up the wall.

And the light still worked.

So I ran back downstairs and began turning off more breakers.  With each one Marty said, "Nope; still on!"

WTF!?

There was only one breaker left and it was marked "Water Heater".

Sure enough, that was the one supplying power to this outlet...

On my next trip up the stairs I found my circuit tester just to be safe.

Then I started getting into the wall.  Both Marty and I wanted to make sure the fire was completely out.

Of course, I discovered that there is a 3/8-inch layer of drywall over the plaster in this room (nice wallpaper by the way).  I'd long suspected so because the reveal on the door and window casings isn't right in the kitchen.  (Note in this picture - all I've done is remove the overlay-ed drywall; those holes in the plaster were already there hiding behind the drywall...)

After verifying that there was no more fire and that no wires were energized, I could start investigating while Marty called his Boss.

It's a good thing he acted quickly at the beginning or our next call would have been to the fire department...

So I think here's the cause: the insulation is not intact on the third wire from the left.  His "noodle" chain hit this wire and then arced when it touched the metal outlet box in the next picture.

Clearly I said a lot of bad words about the last ding-dong to play with this junction box.  And if you don't see at least a couple things wrong with this picture then you shouldn't be playing with electricity.

Seriously.

Lastly, here's the picture of the outlet on the kitchen side.

Originally, it was located it the lower left corner of the hole.  Those with sharp eyes will notice that it doesn't look like it will reach that location any longer.  And they'd be right.  That's because there was a big nick in the romex sheath about 2 inches above the outlet box; so I fixed it.

Oh yeah; the ground wire wasn't attached to the metal box.

Nor were the side terminals wrapped with electrical tape to prevent them from hitting the side of the box and shorting out (note fancy new red electrical tape that is now present)..

Not pictured is the kitchen towel that was stuffed between the outlet box and the stud on the left edge of the hole (apparently to keep it in place because the box wasn't attached to anything!).

Also not pictured is the broken nail-on plastic outlet box that was lying at the bottom of the stud cavity along with several other pounds of construction debris.

Maybe I should move on to happier thoughts before my head explodes.

Ah, that's better...

I'm not worried about the holes in the wall; the kitchen needs to be gutted to the studs anyway and I just got an early start on it.  ;-)

Before Marty finished up the rest of the alarm installation, his Boss stopped by to make sure everything was OK and we had a great talk.  Turns out our kids go to school together.  I'd recommend these guys if you need an alarm system.

Just mention that you'd like them to find a different way to test the smoke alarm.  ;-)