Picked up a Prime Switched Outlet to help tame the U2711 monitor’s DisplayPort incompatibility and, being that type of guy, had to open it up to see what’s inside.
Good thing I did:
Admittedly, white is neutral, so that stray wire would should just pop the GFI, but, still …
You can wind up with events like this:
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
6 responses to “It Wasn’t Quite Touching, So Ship It”
I had a no-name receptacle smoke/half-burn on me. Didn’t do a full analysis, but stab-in-the-back wiring doesn’t win my appreciation. Ended up replacing all 15A outlets and the somewhat worse light switches in the house, (One switch had failed entirely, while two others had fatal breaks in the housing.) The 20A receptacles were actually a decent quality, but I suspect the others came from the usual sources. (1999 construction, guess they weren’t on eBay at the time…) Leviton Preferred FTW!
A pox on their collective backsides!
You don’t understand, it’s a feature! They developed a cheap, carefully calibrated spark gap to protect your appliances from overvoltage!
If the neutral and safety ground see enough voltage difference to arc over, I want the horizon between me and the house…
Ah! the smart bit is that the protection is active only when the wall socket is miswired :)
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