House Fire

[MexicanYarisTK]

My guess is the electrical was probably installed to code, but it was old and the fuse/breaker failed with the high power draw. Or actually thinking about it, the fuse/breaker might have worked but corrosion helped the current jump, heating things up, and creating the spark show/fire. I've seen those big fuses for these systems get corroded over time, and corrosion can really wreak havoc.

An HVAC person probably wouldn't check the electrical, so it's likely just a miss overall.

It's not really worth speculating what happened, because we'll never know for sure. But it is worth all of us taking a minute to do some cursory inspection of our electrical systems in our homes. Breakers are supposed to be exercised regularly (switched on and off), and fuses checked for corrosion. If anything is wrong, call an electrician before things get to this point.

Things like this are terrible, but nobody was injured and material things can be replaced. It's a great reminder for all of us, and if it can prevent future disaster, it could end up turning a negative into a positive.

If you can't tell, electrical and fires scare the shit out of me.

The fire inspector drew the same conclusions. Overall a freak accident due to a bunch of issues that all combined to cause it.

It’s hard not to be angry/emotional but the LL is being reasonable in the moment. Let’s see what happens when the lease is termed and we need close to $5,5k back in move in costs.

We are indeed thankful that we were awake and we are safe. the smoke detectors did their job (we heard them as smoke was filling the house) but I acknowledge the more stressful/traumatic the situation would’ve been being woken up by audible smoke detectors and inhaling smoke while trying to get the kid/get out versus being awake and proactive.


PRO TIP, the fire inspector said if anything in your HVAC unit is approaching 15+ years old, you should probably swap it out and at minimum have it inspected (fuses, etc).

If our fuse was original to the system (which he believes it was) it would’ve been 17 years old.

Its a good thing I replaced my parents houses hvac unit last summer cause for some reason it did not cool as it used to be so we had to change, and thank god I've done that before I headed to Turkey.