I woke up about 6:00 AM today.
Got out of bed.
Turned my computer on so it could boot up and walked toward the kitchen.
The thermostat for our condo is just outside the kitchen door in our Dining room. As I do every morning, I turned the heat up. We turn it down at night because our bedroom gets way too warm.
I grab a cup of coffee and head over to my desk to do my thing.
About a half hour later, I smell something . . . . burning . . . . . like plastic burning. The kind of smell that comes from an electrical problem.
I sniff around the computer I just turned on. No intense smell. I walk in the kitchen, very much more intense smell. There's nothing running in the kitchen except the air handler in the utility room for the electric heat pump.
I go to the thermostat and look. It indicates it has called on the "Auxiliary Heat" which is a two-thousand watt electric heating coil inside the air handler. The reason electric heat pump systems have a condenser/compressor (heat pump) outside AND a resistance-heater inside, is for times during Winter when the outdoor heat pump CANNOT get enough heat from the cold air. The outdoor heat pump signals the thermostat that it cannot generate enough heat, and the thermostat engages the auxiliary heater inside the air handler. I turned the system OFF.
I woke my son up and told him I smell electrical burning; he smelled the burning smell immediately. I told him I think it's the auxiliary heater in the air handler.
He gets up, gets dressed. I wake my wife up and tell her to get dressed because there's a burning smell in the house. She gets up.
Son comes out into the kitchen and agrees with my belief it's the auxiliary heater inside the air handler. He shuts the circuit breakers and grabs some tools to open the air handler.
Sure enough, there's two white #6 wires coming into the auxiliary heater but there's a wire nut joining those thick wires to two thinner wires which actually power the auxiliary heater. The wire nut is MELTED AND BURNED (Image above), and the outer plastic jacket on the two thinner wires are BURNED near the wire nut.
The installer used the wrong wire nut to join the thin wires to the thick. He should have used an Ideal (brand) #455 which is for the #6 wires, but instead used a nut that was for the smaller wires. This resulted in insufficient electrical connection between the small and large wires.
That insufficient connection did not allow the fullness of the smaller wires to properly join the larger ones, thereby putting all the electric through just a few strands of the smaller wire. Those strands couldn't handle all that power flow and started over-heating; MAYBE EVEN ARCING. The heat started melting the wire nut and burning the plastic jacket on the smaller wires.
Thank God I smelled the burning and took action right away. This is exactly the type of problem that can literally cause a house to burn down.
My son is at Home Depot, about two miles from our house, getting the proper wire nuts.
When he gets home, he will have to cut off the burned ends of the smaller wires - any likely the larger ones too, and re-combine those wires properly, in a proper sized wire nut.
What a way to start the day.
