Last night I could have ended up homeless. I bought a fairly decent midpriced dblwide mobile home last year and it has needed a lot of repairs for such a new home, (plumbing, etc). I plugged in my electric tea pot in my bedroom to have some tea near my desk. I went out to the kitchen and when I came back, yellow flames were shooting out of the outlet and it was buzzing like a nest of pissed hornets!
It turns out that these mobile homes have the cheapest power outlets I have ever seen combined with in series wiring. After a few years these lose their connection partially which causes heat when something is plugged in.
The type I am talking about only has a place for the wires to poke in. They are basically pinched in and it is a very shitty design that UL allows. On top of that all the rooms in this place are wired in series. This means that the power goes to one outlet, then passes through to the next. If any outlets have a problem in the series, it can cause heat and shorts in the entire series.
What happened in my case is that this outlet had 3 wires poked in each side. (3) black and (3) white so (3) circuits converged there. A tea pot runs on a lot of amps so it made the outlet fail sooner than if a clock or similar was plugged in.
I had to run and shut down the main with no warning and our computers both got shut off abruptly which I hate to do.
When I got back to the room the fire was out but the wire had melted insulation for about 3-4 inches back and there was black soot on the wall. The room was full of electrical smoke and with no power I had no way to clear it. My windows are mostly sealed for the winter.
I had to endure the smoke and repair the outlet before I dared to turn the breakers back on. I have it cleaned up and installed and oversize wall plate to hide the damage.
Today I replaced all the outlets in my room with ones that require screws to hold the wires. I will be changing all of them in the house asap.
If you have these cheap ass outlets, get new ones. They only cost $2-$3 each for name brand and they are easy as can be to change. I did the other (4) in my room today in less than 20 minutes.
It feels good to be running from the devil
Another breath and I'm up another level
It feels good to be up above the clouds
It feels good for the first time in a long time now