House Electrical fire caused by adapter. Ever heard of that?

Anyplace you have a connection you add the chance of a poor connection overheating and causing a fire. Every adapter is another connection. You also said you have a heavy extension cord attached. That makes me wonder how long it is and how much power you are pulling through that outlet.

I did repairs for somebody in place that had been hit with power surges and so they put surge protectors on all his electronics and appliances. Those shunt high power to the ground if hit with high voltage.

Then his house or lines nearby was hit by lightening. He said the protectors protected his appliances and electronics but every one of them caught fire. He said he had 7 fires burning all at once.

Now he says he won't own a surge protector that is not in a metal box. The plastic ones burn.

(1) Because of corporate American greed, so many things are made in China (or elsewhere) these days robbing Americans of jobs. Also, America does have some electrical standards, but if they're not made in America, the place making them has the liberty to do what they want. Could be that the internal metal parts were touching causing a short, which caused a fire.

(2) When an appliance has three prongs, it's for a reason. It's unwise to circumvent that safety precaution. Don't convert a three pronged appliance to a two pronged.

(3) While the extension cord you say had heavier grade wire leading to the wall outlet, you have to remember that the wire leading from a multi-plugged extension is only for the purpose of the combined electrical output of each of the individual receptacles. The individual receptacle wires are of lesser size than the output wire so you could possibly have burned it at that source also.

(4) While you said that the extension cord had it's own circuit breaker, did you test it? I don't know how many I have had that failed to stop working over time. You should test them periodically that they actually do what you think they should be doing.

(5) The more things you add to a circuit, the more probability you have of something going wrong. Please, for your family's sake, stop that practice and do it the right way.

PS...Chances are that if you burned your house down or killed someone by taking this shortcut your insurance would not pay a dime because this would be considered negligence.

It is not a short in the adapter, rather an overload for the connections that may be of less quality than desired. The connections get warm and change shape which makes for a loose connection, which then gets hotter. The next step is a fire. I have seen it happen many times and the solution is to replace the adapter after a few months of use with a new one. Or best solution is to install a top grade convenience outlet in place of the adapter.

I never had an adapter do that. We have about 6 in our home. They are power supplies with the built in breaker and surge protection. We have TVs into them and we have 8 computers in the house and all have a protected breaker power cord.

The only fire I ever had in 30 years was my toaster. We normally just left it plugged in when done. Well the toaster popped on somehow and was burning in the kitchen. So I never leave anything plugged in on the counters.

It would not shock me that this would happen..A lot of these devices are not UL Listed...I have had ends of cords melt after awhile of use but they were made in China..I do know the the air fresheners that plug in have created many of house fires .Be safe and have the correct devices installed were possible...

People tend to overload these things and they overheat and burn.....You got lucky...This time