HOT Dilemma
The smell of smoke brings questions and urgency in a computer room. It happened to us before. The last time it was the power supply on my husband’s computer. This time it turned out to be a light that hangs under the desk area.
The first thing I noticed was the UPS under my husband’s computer doing a click sound. I figured the battery was expiring, so I turned off the UPS and computer. When we tried to turn it on again later, it still did the click sound. Then my computer started with a beep. I looked and the UPS showed that it was running on battery supply. Well, then we thought something happened to a fuse in the breaker box. Nothing was amiss in there. We flipped the fuses and all seemed fine. However, the smell of smoke soon arose in the computer room.
We started pulling everything out from around the computer and frantically smelled to see where the smoke odor was coming from. We thought it was my husband’s monitor, but it was the light under his computer desk shelf area. We removed it and it was HOT and the shelf was warm! It had started burning a slight mark on the wood under the shelf. The light had a burning electrical smell and so it was removed! I used a cold washcloth with ice on both sides of the shelf to cool it off.
Seems what happened was a chain reaction in the room through the wall outlets. The light was overheating and pulling electricity from the outlets it shared with my husband’s UPS. The UPS tried to compensate and pulled its energy from its battery. When my husband’s UPS was turned off, the electricity was drawing from my outlet, which caused my UPS to react and go on its battery power as well.
Now I just found out that my Subwoofer/speakers aren’t working. They seem to also have been affected by the chain reaction. *sigh.
It could have been much worse if we were sleeping or away from home. We just have to shut down these things when we are away from the computer room for too long.
……………………………………….
Comments: 1.
What a story!
Comment by Ken — 5/23/2006 @ 4:29 am
2.
I am glad you guys were home there is nothing scarier than
thinking that your house or something in it is on fire.
I have been through a fire and it is a nightmare. I always
uplug everything I can just to be on the safe side.
And right now here in FL with all the wild fires our house has been smelling like smoke for a couple of weeks so we are always checking something here lately. Have a great day :>)
Comment by Stephanie — 5/23/2006 @ 8:26 am
3.
Wendy,
Even when you are physically there, I have personally seen you at work!
You go at such a BLAZING speed, that I think you could burn up a whole computer room!
:)
Barb
Comment by Barbara (Xerraire) — 5/23/2006 @ 9:18 am