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House Fire
Believe it or not, this house fire started because a properly operating circuit breaker did not trip while the wire overheated. How could this happen? When the circuit breaker is too large (30 Amps) for the cable (#14 AWG NM or non-metallic), the cable is covered with 6-8” of cellulose insulation, and the cable was drawing close to 30 Amps. If any of these three conditions were not present, the fire would most likely not have occurred. This homeowner entered contests for the most Christmas tree lights in their community. He kept tripping circuit breakers until they put in a 30 Amp circuit breaker that held. They recently had insulation and new wiring installed, not knowing that their circuit breaker was too large. This, then, was the recipe for failure of the cable and the fire in their attic. Synergy Technologies performed the Electrical Fire Analysis efforts in this case.
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The photo above shows the attic in which
the NM cable was routed.
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