Major screw up

[byrdr1]

Mods move what ever forum it fits:
long story.
Thursday night I go to camper and get my laptop to do taxes. I open it up and turn on a electric heater on the sink counter top. I only open the rocking chair slide side about a foot in order to get LT by the TV. its been there since last trip(Nov 2012).
in my haste and it was cold in camper I turned the heater on figuring I will do something in the camper for few minutes. few minutes later leave the camper head back into house. start working on taxes... forward Friday am as I am backing out the driveway and they are calling for ice and sleet and I am in hurry to get to work before something happens to the roads, I see the slide out about a foot. No problem the slide out awning will protect it from any water. to work I go..
Friday pm get home and see the slide and think I need to close that thing up before the next rain showers come in. Open the door and I am greeted by the most obnoxious odor. whats that smell, I look toward the electric heater and it is melted onto the counter top.
OH Crap and few other words. I proceed to the area and unplug the melted cord from the outlet. the electric fire was out but still had juice(another problem the GFI should have kicked the power off but had not).
I toss the stuff out the door, call the wife to report this damage. Counter top is fried all along the power cord line where it had laid on the counter top. The sink has a hole burnt in it on the corner. Camper has soot all over the living/dining area. I am POed about it but in the next breath I am grateful no more damage was done.
The electric heater was plugged in to the outlet to the left of the stove. It had been plugged into the outlet by the floor with the cord running along the baseboard of the sink cabinet(IE carpet).
Also if the slide would have been all the way I had CWorld bag full of towels and stuff from last trip sitting in one of the dinette chairs. This would have been right against the cord set and/or close enough based on the burn pattern to have caught fire also. The carpet would have caught fire had the cord been on the floor.
So all in all...I was very lucky I still have my camper today. it smells inside and I have a nice designer counter top. NO electric heater anymore(Laxsco/Lansco tower brand).
BUT the bottom line is I have my camper and my house. the camper sits beside my house near my carport. If camper had gone up the carport could have too. Wife's car under carport, then the house with my two 4 legged kids inside it..
SO what do I do today after a not so restful night thinking and dreaming about the what if's. I clean everything up and that took me around 2 hours of dusting with furniture polish and several rags, they all turned black as I was wiping everything down. Cleaned the burnt soot from the counter top and have asked my dealer for a price for new counter top and a sink. I can live with the sink problem and counter top but it sure it looks like crap. So I am hoping the dealer can get me a price, if not I will do something, counter top is stapled to the cabinet. I can get it off but would like to replace with same or close to it material. I'll post a picture tomorrow when it warms up. I have had an electric heater in my campers ever since I have had power to them, never turned up over 40 degrees, unless I was inside the camper. Still not sure what happened, BUT!
just had to vent and share with my cyber friends..
Take care and be careful...
randy

[Festus2]

Yikes! Really sorry to hear about this but you are right in that it could have been much worse. If you can look upon this in that light, it may not seem quite so bad. Thankfully, the damage was confined to the RV but it is very scary.

Would your insurance policy cover all or a portion of having it repaired?

Finding the cause of this electrical fire would be worth pursuing....something in the RV wiring? or a faulty heater/cord?

Keep us posted and count your blessings.

[labs4life]

Definitely an insurance claim. Fortunately for us, they will cover screw ups as well as faulty items. Policy states "sudden and accidental". Get your agent on the line and get some help with this deal!

[Outbackmel]

ALWAYS unplug your "safe" heaters when you leave your RV. Never sleep with a heater on OR plugged in. Never sleep under an electric blanket. Warm your room or bed and shut them off and unplug them. Ask any firefighter and you will hear horror stories. Most of this STUFF is made in China or Vietnam or some other place by a 10 year old child. Would you sleep well if YOUR child made your heater or blanket? Didn't think so.

Previous post was fortunate camper was not occupied. Plenty of stories of cars in a garage catching fire, not good, bad! These campers burn like a box of lighted matches.

Be safe. Be happy!

[hankpage]

While stored on your own property the trailer should be covered under your homeowners insurance. GFIC does not trip unless ground is interrupted. Sounds to me as if the fan on the heater stopped causing it to over heat. With that much damage I am surprised that a circuit breaker did not trip. As mentioned, you are very lucky that things were not worse. A local cabinet maker may be able to make a new top for you and a stainless sink is not much more weight than rv plastic. Good luck with your cleanup and repairs, Hank ...................... Keep us posted on the outcome.

[fla-gypsy]

Most importantly no one was hurt. Hopefully it is insured and you can get it put back together like you want

[JRTJH]

Hank has a very likely scenario, but there is another one that may play a "key role" in this. If the slide was out only a foot or so, then it wasn't sealed to the trailer sidewall and the air leakage around the sides of the slide were probably enough to allow the heat from the heater to escape. Chances are it never shut off from the time you plugged it in until you found it 2 or 3 days later. Granted, they "should" be engineered to run 24/7, but it's probable that after running for a while, it overheated the case, the thermal cutoff may have failed and it kept getting hotter and hotter. Once it melted enough to stop the fan from turning, then the rest is history.

As for the sink and countertop, nearly any formica installer can rough up the remainder of the counter and install new formica over the existing countertop. You may be able to get a much better grade of laminate than you'd get from the factory if you can find something that you're happy with that is close to the same. The plastic sinks are only about $50, so that's not a big issue.

Like everyone else has said, YIKES !!!!! You are one very lucky person. Someone is looking out for you

Thankfully nothing more serious than a little property damage occurred. Count your lucky stars on this one.

John

[mikell]

Originally Posted by Outbackmel

ALWAYS unplug your "safe" heaters when you leave your RV. Never sleep with a heater on OR plugged in. Never sleep under an electric blanket. Warm your room or bed and shut them off and unplug them.

I think thats a major overaction but to each his own. I'll enjoy my heater and electric blanket.

[ktmracer]

sorry to hear, hope you can get everything back to normal. However, on the GFI not tripping, a GFI is designed to trip if there is a current imbalance between hot and neutral. There are many faults, including the one you described that may not result in enough of a current imbalance between hot and neutral and GFI won't trip. GFI's are NOT a circuit breaker. In fact, it is possible to get a shock from a GFI protected outlet. If you are very well insulated from ground, you can get across the hot and neutral and not necessarily trip the GFI.

the newer GFI outlets will also detect a ground neutral bond at or downstream of the outlet and trip as well, since ground and neutral should be isolated except at the main panel.

[byrdr1]

well here are the after photos of the cleaned counter top. About 2 hours worth of clean up including dusting the soot up in the camper.
sorry for two different sized photos "tapatalk"??

[michael]

? Was the smoke detector going off.

[byrdr1]

If it was I was at work Friday or over night Thursday. did not hear anything Friday a.m.. This is parked beside my house next to my attached carport.


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[Comptech]

Maybe the counter-tops have some sort of fire retardant?
OP, you are one lucky man!