The tale of a power strip
The other morning (way-too-dark-thirty) I realized my CPAP had stopped. I rolled over and the clock was off too. But the room lights were on.
Ok, not a power outage. I crawled over to where I could reach things and the clock & CPAP started up again. I tried to check the plugs and they all seemed to be ok.
A while later, it happened again. This time I managed to get to where I could see things without things coming back on. A notable item was the the power switch for the strip was lit up. So the *strip* was getting power...
But as soon as I messed with it, things came back on. *sigh*
This happened several more times throughout the early morning. I just tried to deal.
Finally, when things went out again I heard a distinct "bzzap!" noise. Something was arcing. This is very much not a good thing.
So I wound up unplugging everything from the strip and unplugging it from the wall. I searched my stock of spare cords, etc, but didn't see another power strip.
Arrgh,, that meant waiting until Albertsons opened at 6am and hoping they had some in stock.
Then I remember that I had another power strip plugged into the outlet at the foot of the bed for use if I moved some things over to this side of the room.
After more fun contortions, I managed to get it out and plugged in in place of the arcing one.
Hours later I took apart the bad strip. Only thing I found was a dust bunny a bit smaller than the cotton bud on a Q-tip, but a lot less substantial. It was sitting between the black and white wires on the power switch. There were a couple of black dots wjhere it was almost touching the wires.
That appears to be what was the problem, but I just finished disassembling the power strip and tossed the pieces in the trash. Didn't want to tempt anyone to retrieve and use it.
That was a very strange incident. I'm surprised that the dust bunny could carry enough current to cause the power to the outlets to fail, but not enough to catch fire.
The gods of electricity are weird.
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Ok, not a power outage. I crawled over to where I could reach things and the clock & CPAP started up again. I tried to check the plugs and they all seemed to be ok.
A while later, it happened again. This time I managed to get to where I could see things without things coming back on. A notable item was the the power switch for the strip was lit up. So the *strip* was getting power...
But as soon as I messed with it, things came back on. *sigh*
This happened several more times throughout the early morning. I just tried to deal.
Finally, when things went out again I heard a distinct "bzzap!" noise. Something was arcing. This is very much not a good thing.
So I wound up unplugging everything from the strip and unplugging it from the wall. I searched my stock of spare cords, etc, but didn't see another power strip.
Arrgh,, that meant waiting until Albertsons opened at 6am and hoping they had some in stock.
Then I remember that I had another power strip plugged into the outlet at the foot of the bed for use if I moved some things over to this side of the room.
After more fun contortions, I managed to get it out and plugged in in place of the arcing one.
Hours later I took apart the bad strip. Only thing I found was a dust bunny a bit smaller than the cotton bud on a Q-tip, but a lot less substantial. It was sitting between the black and white wires on the power switch. There were a couple of black dots wjhere it was almost touching the wires.
That appears to be what was the problem, but I just finished disassembling the power strip and tossed the pieces in the trash. Didn't want to tempt anyone to retrieve and use it.
That was a very strange incident. I'm surprised that the dust bunny could carry enough current to cause the power to the outlets to fail, but not enough to catch fire.
The gods of electricity are weird.
This entry was originally posted at https://kengr.dreamwidth.org/1154451.html. Please comment there using OpenID.