Fire hazards of receptable adaptors

A picture is worth a thousand words. The adaptor was smoking. The breaker never tripped.

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Quite common actually. It only takes a few amps to fry the receptacle and/or adaptor. It takes 15 to 20 amps to trip the breaker.

This would have likely tripped an AFCI breaker, however.

I find this strange . You would think that once the short starts that the current draw would increase , drawing more amps . :smiley:

That’s exactly the reason AFCI’s were developed.

An arc, capable of igniting combustible material, can be generated at relatively low amperage. A fire can be started long before there is enough draw to trip the circuit breaker.