DS Forums

 
 

Has your phone socket ever caught fire?


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 01-11-2016, 01:01
Richardcoulter
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,700

A family say that their Sky/Openreach socket caught fire!

Openreach say that this is not possible.

They gave him a temporary mobile internet connection, put in a power surge protector and offered him £120, but say that it must be due to his electric wiring being faulty

Are dangerous power surges possible or common with telephone lines (with their low voltage)?

Can they actually catch fire?

BBC1 Wales would like anybody who has experienced this to contact them.

The relevant item starts at about 0:13:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080ysbz
Richardcoulter is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 01-11-2016, 09:55
SteveMcK
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 5,187
Are dangerous power surges possible or common with telephone lines (with their low voltage)?
Its not the voltage that makes it impossible but the current. You can short the wires in a phone connection and no harm will come to it (it's how pulse dialing works, after all).

Can they actually catch fire?
No.

Sounds like either faulty internal mains wiring, a lightning strike, or maybe some external contractor digging a hole and shorting wires.
SteveMcK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 15:48
Richardcoulter
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,700
Many thanks, it looks like BT are right then and the phone wiring has somehow come into contact with the mains
Richardcoulter is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 15:55
chrisjr
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Reading
Posts: 27,884
Thing that puzzles me is if the wiring had become live to the mains for whatever reason then it wouldn't do anything plugged into it any good and there would be a potential for anyone plugging a phone into the line to get a nasty belt.

And why did Openreach not see an unusual voltage on the line if they did indeed test it? Makes me wonder if this family plugged some faulty bit of kit into the line, for example a mains powered answering machine or DECT phone base station and it put the nasty voltage onto the line?
chrisjr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 16:51
Tassium
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: It's Grim
Posts: 24,400
In the item it said this: "Openreach fitted a 'breaker box', to act like a fuse, on the outside of the house"

Later on it was this 'breaker box' that actually caught fire. There were images in the programme showing a flame. Presumably taken by the householders at the time.


This programme did not impress. I was expecting the BBC to bring in a technical expert to chat about it but they did not do that.

For all the world it looks like the comm lines are having very high currents dropped on them. I assume that would happen in the green cabinet in the street.
Tassium is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 17:07
Gusto Brunt
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 11,509
No. Thank God!
Gusto Brunt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 17:22
chrisjr
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Reading
Posts: 27,884
In the item it said this: "Openreach fitted a 'breaker box', to act like a fuse, on the outside of the house"

Later on it was this 'breaker box' that actually caught fire. There were images in the programme showing a flame. Presumably taken by the householders at the time.


This programme did not impress. I was expecting the BBC to bring in a technical expert to chat about it but they did not do that.

For all the world it looks like the comm lines are having very high currents dropped on them. I assume that would happen in the green cabinet in the street.
Not necessarily. It could be something plugged into a phone socket feeding a high voltage/current back up the line.
chrisjr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2016, 21:05
Tassium
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: It's Grim
Posts: 24,400
Not necessarily. It could be something plugged into a phone socket feeding a high voltage/current back up the line.
It seems to me a that the socket inside the house would also go up in flames in that case.

The programme did not mention this but it could have been an oversight of course.


(The inside socket did smoke/burn, but that was before the external box was installed.)
Tassium is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-11-2016, 13:47
daveyfs
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Swansea
Posts: 871
There's a lot of legacy infrastructure around where phone wires are carried lower down on poles which carry the 3 phase 240/415V electricity mains, often old open wire systems. I wonder whether the phone cable has come into contact with 240V at the pole rather than at the house.

This sort of thing - you can see the phone service as the thin wire at the lowest point
http://www.electrical-contractor.net/PC/UKL_LV.jpg
daveyfs is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply



Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 06:01.