I have a breaker that has just started to have a burning smell. What do I need to do? How do I track down what it is connecting to?
By Rodney
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You need to call an electrician ASAP. Don't take a chance on burning your house down especially at night while you are sleeping. Faulty wiring can do it. Our house burned when I was 13 years old. It's an experience I'll never forget.
I am so with LG on this! Burning smells from something electrical is always bad-shut off the power to that circuit and get a licensed professional in there right away!
If you are the homeowner, you may be able to negotiate the fee with the electrician if it's out of your budget right now to have the needed work done. Also, there are groups out there who can help you financially on something this serious. Try calling Habitat for Humanity in your area to see if they can suggest an affordable professional, or even a group that will help fund the repairs.
If you are renting, you need to be on the landlord about this, and don't let him or her dwaddle. If the landlord doesn't get this attended to, he/she is in breech of contract and you have renter rights depending on your state tenancy laws-look them up online.
This really is a very dangerous situation that needs to be taken care of immediately, can't stress that enough!
Please call a licensed electrician. No conserving on this. It sounds serious. This could save your life.
I had a bad breaker and didn't smell it. It did eventually start a fire in the breaker panel. If I were you I'd call a licensed electrician.
And one more shut off your power immediately and "call a professional electrician ASAP"!
This is not something to mess with and you could lose your home to fire and/or the life of you and any loved ones (including pets) in the home :-(
PS - To stress my point, my aunties small home completely burned to the ground just two weeks ago because of faulty wiring in an outlet that a turned on lamp was plugged into. Blessedly it wasn't at night while she was asleep and Blessedly the fire department was able to rescue her doggies but were unable to rescue her birdie :-(
Yes, call an electrician IMMEDIATELY - turn that breaker off & remove the fuse if you can! If you rent, call your landlord & insist on having something done ASAP!
If you have too many things plugged into this breaker, it should be tripping the breaker. Since it isn't something is wrong that is preventing the breaker from tripping, or the wiring is bad - either way, you have a fire just waiting to happen!
You might simply need to have the breaker replaced or rewired, but you need to get it checked our you'll have a much bigger problem.
A burning smell means exactly that - something is burning. It's probably just smoldering right now, the wires are getting hot & burning through their protective coating. If not taken care of, it will continue to smolder until it sparks & starts burning.
Electrical fires are bad! You almost never know about it until it's too late, because it burns inside the walls or the attic & next thing you know, the whole house is on fire! What if this happened while you were in bed & you couldn't get out? At the least, you'd lose everything you own!
My house was built in the 1970s when they used aluminum wiring in homes. It's extremely dangerous because it's prone to getting hot & starting fires. We've had outlets that have gotten hot to the touch & fortunately my husband is able to rewire the outlet up to the main wire in the attic. I've always been able to smell them when they get hot, but I try to check all the outlets by feeling them several times a year anyway.
One outlet (the one in the kitchen I used the most) had been rewired like that twice over the years, when I had my crockpot plugged into it & kept smelling the 'hot' smell. I went in the kitchen & the outlet was smoking. When my husband took it apart, the wired had gotten so hot they'd burned all the way through the wires, melted the plastic cover & some of the wood was beginning to smolder! If I'd plugged that crock in & left the house, as I usually did, our house would've burned down! My husband had to rewire it all the way to the breaker box & we haven't had a problem since.
I'm telling you this, because this isn't something to mess with, unlike Deeli's aunt, we've always been really lucky. My neighbor just a few houses down wasn't so lucky, she's a single mom of 5 who's house burned to the ground from an electrical fire cause by aluminum wiring.
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