<font color=skyblue>I take my title from a show that comes on the National Geographic Channel. My adventure just a few hours ago could have killed me or even burned the house down. Luckily, I have escaped this disaster with only a minor inconvenience for the moment.

The Story.

I had purchased a GFCI receptacle. It cost about $12.00 and has a trip breaker built into it for secondary protection against voltage problems. Our house was built in 1956, and was therefore not required to have a ground wire setup. I found out from local electritions that this job would cost $2,000! I decided instead to buy this outlet box so that I could have extra protection on my computer besides the UPS/Surge protector.

The instructions said to place the black wire on the gold screw and the white line goes to the silver screw. But I had to sets of lines in the firebox. Two blacks and two whites. No problem, because there are two sets of screws as well. So now I had to decide which one was the input line and which was the output line, because this must be a flow-through setup, where the black and white of one line flows through the receptacle and into the other set of black and white wires. I chose to select the left set as the input lines. That meant that I put them on the top two screws, one on each side. That let the right set of wires to go onto the bottom screws, black to gold and white to silver. Easy. I thought.

I test the outlet out when I turn on the power by plugging in a lamp to each socket. Worked fine.

This is where it gets scary, so close your eyes if you cannot take it.

I decide then to plug in the cord that is my UPS, which is hosting my PC.

BOOM!!!

There was fire, smoke, a loud pop, and the smell of burning stuff. I leap from the flames and run to the control box to shut power down to the outlets. I come back to investigate the damage. The black line on the right had been fried and destroyed, which probably points to it being the line in, not the line out like I thought. That means I must of had the lines in the wrong direction, as the power supposed to be on top of the receptacle. But I cannot prove or disprove any of that. I take an inventory of the damage done. Five outlets found in an overall of three rooms are not functional. The power supply has been disrupted now that the melted line is not in play. Also the UPS ground prong has been slightly melted, but still works.

Then I look up with a teary eye to the PC. Was it dead? Had I fried my best friend, my most important resource? My link to IW??? I find an extension cord and run a line to the nearest operational plugin. I turn on the power. She greets me with a warm hum. I smile. She had not died. Getting into Windows however was not as easy as that. My mouse was not moving. I look up to the Belkin USB hub and it indicates it has power. I logged in with the keyboard and saw that Windows was operational.

So I reboot. The mouse does not recover. I plug it into another USB port on my main box instead of the hub...and it works! Eureka! So then I eye the suspicious $50.00 hub and wonder. I try to print something. Printer not found. I try to scan something...Scanner not found. I try them in a workable USB slot on the machine and they do work. So, the only thing that got fried was the Hub.

Well, I was not about to take $50.00 loss. I called Office Depot where I bought it back in August and told them that I had turned on my PC to discover that the hub was not alive, but that it was indicating it still had power...even though it would not operate any device plugged to it. I told them that I had bought it during a rebate promotion and that the original receipt was mailed off to get my rebate. (That part at least is true.)

It took me going all the way up to the assistant manager after being passed off twice...but I finally received the response I wanted. Yes...you can replace it without the receipt.

So...now I have a 100 ft. cord running through the house, a new USB hub, and five unoperational outlets. Not bad, eh?</font>

I suspect you just crossed both "sides" of your house line. One black was probably 180 degrees out of phase with the other - resulting a dead short at 240v instead of 120v (this is how you get 240 for the stove and dryer)

You also see this kind of arrangement in kitchen split circuits.

Why exactly do you think that a GFCI would provide additional protection against voltage problems? All a GFCI does it look at the current going in to a device, and the current leaving, and if the two are different by more then a specific amount (I belive this is usually 0.005 Amps) then they trip. They are designed to detect shorts, not to detect power spikes, so they won't provide as much protection against things like power spikes as compared to a good surge protector, or even your UPS.

Very smooth Larry :D

There's a reason why I let electricians do that stuff... it started when I had one in to fix something, and shortly had him correct every single electrical thing I'd ever done in the house [img]smile.gif[/img]

I hadn't even installed an outlet correctly... :(

Glad you're okay and that the damage was minimal.

Bad move... Everyone know the first thing you should do in a disaster like that is insure the security of your computer. It could have burned or worse while you left it unprotected... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 11-11-2004, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

Lovely work, Larry. Social engineering wins out every time!

*Remembers to never ask Larry to come fix an outlet in her house*
with that said, I will shut up now, glad you are ok though....

<font color=skyblue>And this from the woman who made blue scrambled eggs???</font>

<font color=skyblue>And this from the woman who made blue scrambled eggs???</font> </font>[/QUOTE]they were not scrambled! they were over easy [img]tongue.gif[/img]