So my wife calls me in a panic that there is water on the floor and flames and smoke billowing out from behind my tank. She cuts the power to everything (fortunately she was not so panicked that she tried to unplug anything) and I fly home (27 minute drive in 17 minutes) and find that my d@mn protein skimmer went nuts and overflowed into my surge protector, which apparently surged right out of it's plastic housing. I have been thinking about changing my outlets to GFIs but just haven't found the time. A GFI would have tripped immediately, whereas my breaker did not. Fortunately, she was home and stopped it immediately before any real damage could occur...but you can see from the pics what happened in just a few moments. Nothing electrical was damaged aside from the surge protector (although the temptation to load my skimmer full of holes with my .357 was very strong), and no damage was done to the house wiring. Smells a bit funny in here, but that's all. I moved my protector under the tank and now have my skimmer draining into a 5g bucket until I can put it in my soon to be sump. Thank God this didn't happen while we were gone or even worse while we were asleep. I also have two GFI outlets that will be installed this weekend.
Moral of the story is USE A GFI! We were VERY fortunate that this wasn't worse.
The black things on my tub in the pic are fire floaties, btw. And you can see the soot on the glass in two of the pics.
Robbie
Moral of the story is USE A GFI! We were VERY fortunate that this wasn't worse.
The black things on my tub in the pic are fire floaties, btw. And you can see the soot on the glass in two of the pics.
Robbie