Warm panel

 

  Just read a post about thanksgiving day fire, and thought of a call I got at work one night from my wife.  I was working a 12hr night shift, 7pm to 7am, and while in route to work, about 2 blocks away I get a call from my wife at home and shes frantic!  I could hear the fear in her voice as she was telling me that there was smoke comming out from our breaker panel!  Well, I was riding with co-worker and he let me use his car to drive home.  I don't recall why she didn't call 911 now.  I was home in under 1/2hr, and when I entered the room where the panel is, I could smell a faint oder of smoke.  I went outside and killed the power to the house.  Inside again,(flashlight in hand I opened the panel and determined that one of the mainl line connections to the panel had some how come loose and because of the load (Laundry, furnace, lights, etc..) one line had heated up.  Took an allen wrench to all 4 leads (Gnd included) and tightned them all.  
  Because the lead was loose it had started to arch which caused the connection to heat up.  I explaind this to my wife, who was ready to flee to Santa Cruz.  I was completly comfortable with the cause and fix (I deal with 100VAC and 208VAC connection all the time at work)
  Once the wife settled down and understood I was comfortable that the issue was fixed, I explained to here next time call 911!

That's one maintenance item that get over looked in the household, hot cool hot cool things expand and extract things become loose over time especially if you have aluminum wiring in your household. Thanks for the reminder, off to check mine .

Pat R

Glad everything worked out

That's what I'm talking about! Make sure to check out where the smell is coming from and call 911 if it can't be located. Glad you're OK and you probably saved your dwelling.

 

  My experience posted above, happened maybe 3yrs back.  (Forgot to mention)

Make sure you use nolax on all aluminum wire!