Sim Electrical Fire

[B737NG]

Gents,
     Food for thought.....How much do you trust your wiring? What precautions do you have in place in your sim should wires accidentally touch or get crossed? Do you have a smoke detector?

Since the age of 10, I've been wiring things. I remember vividly wiring a door bell for my bedroom so that my sister could ring the bell before entering. I don't consider myself an expert, but savvy enough to wire almost anything within the sim. With an Electrical Engineer as my neighbor to the right and an electrician living behind me....I've got all I need to be safe.....right? WRONG!

Tonight my wife had a 'girls night'. We all know what that means, SIM TIME without the nagging! I had a purpose tonight, wire in the LED lights I ordered. All seemed great. Pre-wire and soldier before installation, and do the final connections once everything is in place. It's 12 volts, so, what could go wrong? especially with a computer supply that when it senses an accidental short, will shut down automatically. I'm golden....simply wire them up.....and I'll be flying with some new illumination in the cockpit.

My son had a friend over for the night, so as I went to the basement to blow up the air mattresses, I left my LED project 3/4 completed upstairs in the garage. I was gone for maybe 10 minutes.....popping upstairs briefly while the mattresses inflated to complete some final installations. Then promptly back down to ensure I didn't over inflate the air mattresses for the boys. All seemed fine until I went upstairs for the final time. I smell smoke.....I see smoke.....as I turned the corner into the sim area.....I see FLAMES!!!! With my heart racing, what do I do? Fire extinguisher? Water? 911? shut off the power?........The later is what I did. I sprinted down to the basement and flipped the two familiar breakers to the sim. When I went back upstairs, a small flame still appeared behind the MIP. A quick puff blew it out.

What the $!#$^%#$ happened? Why didn't the power supply shut down automatically? Was it my wiring? Must be, I was just installing LED's!! but???

As you can see from the pictures, it turned out to be a power cord to the computer supply which powers the IBL's and the new LED's I was installing. Given it's 2:00am where I live (BTW, where's my wife?), I'm still a bit foggy on what happened. Be sure though, I'll be talking to my electrician neighbor about it. At this point, I suspect the 12V + and ground got pinched between two parts of the MIP and shorted. I am still unsure, and frankly a little shell shocked.....

Admittedly, I didn't have a fuse installed for my new LED's......but, ask yourself.....do you? I also don't have a fuse installed for my IBL's......do you? In fact, I trusted myself too much to put in basic protections to ensure the well being of my family.....have you?

Learn from my mistake and ignorance.....tomorrow before I fly.....I will be installing some fuses and a smoke detector......have you?







Humbly, Steve

[FredK]

It would appear that there was a short in the power supply cable, so fusing your LEDs in this case would not have prevented the incident.

Fire in my SIM cockpit has always been a concern of mine.  Although I do not have everything fused anywhere as near as well it could be I have disciplined myself to some easy basic precautions:

(1) All power supply cords are plugged into high quality Belkin surge protectors.
(2) I switch all those surge protectors to "off" whenever I am not using the SIM....so there is no power anywhere when the SIM is not attended
(3) I have 8 dedicated electrical circuits in my SIM room....no one circuit is overloaded.
(4) I have each SIM room electrical circuit breaker clearly identified in my main electrical panel in the event of an emergency.
(5) I have an electrical fire extinguisher in the SIM room. ....and one outside the SIM room. 
(6) I have smoke alarms installed in the cockpit and in the room the cockpit is in.  This thread has spurred my thinking to also install such behind my MIP and OH panels where I have PSUs.
(7) I inspect the cockpit carefully after shut-down for any hint of smoke before leaving the area.

Steve - Thanks for sharing your experience...I would encourage others to share there ideas and experiences as well on this very important topic.

Fred K

[fordgt40]

Fred

All good sound advice, some supplementary suggestions:-

Breakers/fuses should be rated to protect the downstream wiring that they support. It is no good having cable with a current capacity of 10 amps connected to a 15 amp breaker/fuse  - any shorts etc will result in a cable fire

Low voltage DC circuits should be similarly fused to protect the wiring. Often there can be a PC power supply providing 12 volts through say 5 amp distribution wire, yet the only protection will be on the source mains supply, leaving the 12 volt distribution wiring unprotected. Do not assume that the PC power supply will trip out in the case of a "short" - I have a "burnt" hole in my carpet to disprove this.

All my low voltage DC supplies have fuses rated within the maximum current capacity of their downstream wiring.

David

[jackpilot]

Smoke detectors in the shell are a good idea.
Switching off everything ( unplugging  even better) after each session.
Fire extinguisher a must. As the halon type is banned in Canada I have the substitute Halotron type. (Halon still allowed and mandatory on airliners)
These extinguishers shoot a gas which means no mess no residue, compared with powder or worse:water.

[KyleH]

Steve,

I am shocked that this occurred on the INPUT cord to the power supply. Provided that is a UL or CSA listed cord, that would have to be some serious current draw to get that to happen. Your power cord must have been kinked and had a short in itself, or there is a major defect in the power supply. The input fuse on the power supply should have blown before that happened to the cord.

I notice from the pictures that it was an 18 gauge cord. What is the Watt rating of the power supply? Does it have a CSA or UL marking on it?


In addition to the pointers from those above I would add:
- Only use power supplies that have a UL or CSA marking on them. Avoid ones that only have a CE mark. There are a lot of Chinese companies that will put a CE mark (with a very subtle difference to the European mark) that stands for Chinese Export. These have not been tested to European safety standards despite the marks looking almost identical, and likely meet no safety standards as well.

- Output wiring. Again, use wire that is properly rated for the current and voltage you are drawing, and make sure it is UL or CSA approved. DO NOT use speaker wire! Speaker wire is not rated for carrying any kind of continuous current like that used in lighting.

[RayS]

One last thing I'll add is make sure the circuit breaker in your main house breaker panel is functioning correctly. You might have a breaker rated too high for the current draw (Thinking electric stove breaker)

A current draw that high should have tripped the main panel breaker...

I have 3 smoke alarms in my sim room, and a fresh extinguisher nearby at the door.. because.. well... we learn from experience.

[iwik]

This is what every simmer needs to avoid, unfortunately Hydroponic Cannabis growers
hav'nt learnt yet.
Les

[RayS]

HAHA!

Gotta give them credit for maintaining an all-white topology and I really dig the cooling system  on the lower right.. :-)

[blueskydriver]

Not that I would know, but I bet when a person who is high looks at this or the guys doing it, see all of this as perfectly normal. Too them each wire "JUST FLOWS MAN!"...lol. To us non-high folks we wouldn't understand; although, if the fire department crews are moonlighting Hydroponic Cannabis growers, they'll showup with some serious tangled up fire hoses, and then with all things being equal, there would be no fire or problems. Instead, it would be a bunch of guys hanging out, saying "DUDE, that is so cooooolll".

Okay, I will stop ROTFLMAO...LOL...okay, okay...

Steve, what else is on that same circuit in your house? It has too be something like a high amp motor of a fridge or heater. Check the outlet itself, remove the cover and pullout the plugin unit, do you see any browning. Also, after you replace the PSU power cord and get everything working again; feel along the walls where the circuit is located at and see if it feels hot when using your sim.

I am betting this happened because you used a plugin air mattress pump on the same circuit as you your sim stuff. The pump heated the circuit up, but didn't trip the circuit breaker. So, all the heat on the circuit was looking for a place too go and likely your PSU cord wiring was the "path of least resistance" and caused the thin wires too over heat causing the outer core to melt.

You real problem is decicated circuits for your sim. I bet anything that is what caused this and it will give you more problems in the future... Trust me, if you read some of my old post, you would know that I have been there, done that already.

Best Regards,

John

[wodyfox]

Hi,

just to add an exemplary setup of an electronic compartment.
See this link:  http://www.flying-the-winglets.de/ElectronicCompartment.html

Peter

Edit: This is the right link  http://www.flying-the-winglets.de/Power1.html
sorry,
Peter

[KyleH]

David, if you look on the 'next page' there is a link that takes you to another page, that shows how it is all in an enclosure.

[fordgt40]

Kyle

Kyle, thank you, I eventually found the information under the small link! Apologies and I have deleted the original post

David

[KyleH]

No need to remove you post. You brought up important points that someone else reading this and looking at the pictures might not be aware of.
Usually would be better to leave it there and apologize in an edit or another post. That way there is continuity in the conversation and someone else just browsing would hopefully consider the points you made in their own project.

At first glance I too though it looked dangerous so I dug a little deeper to verify the safety of that install. Others might not realize the danger to even look for that other page.

[fordgt40]

Kyle

Thanks for the advice. To keep the thread logical, I repeat my original concerns in the now deleted post, which were based on the photographs in the link by Wodyfox. There were exposed screws in the terminal strips and contact breakers which carry a lethal 240 volt. It was not readily apparent that these dangers were actually within an enclosed cabinet.