The unit was installed when we built the house in 2006. We have had a number of issues through the years that had to be addressed, but it was limping along. On Saturday April 9th at about 3:00 AM my wife heard a very large pop and soon after saw that we were getting smoke out of the registers. I went down and discovered a fire inside the unit and was able to get it put out with a fire extinguisher. From the time she heard the noise until I had it put out was probably 5 to 10 minutes. The fire department confirmed everything was out. It appears that a capacitor blew up and caught the unit on fire. We feel very fortunate that we were home when this happened, that my wife heard the pop and woke up and that I was able to get the fire put out fairly quickly. We are concerned for others that may have this unit. We would really hate for anyone else to have to go through this same ordeal or even worse. I really would recommend that if you have this unit, have someone come out and if they can do an inspection on the components to make sure they are not going bad, it probably would be money well spent. Here is a picture with the arrow pointing to the part that blew up. Was not sure where to post this, but hopefully the word gets out. Thank you, Allan
Yikes. Seen worse. Electricity does what it wants to do. I would think the CB would have tripped and not let stuff get hot enough to burn. Mark
I am not sure at what point the breakers tripped, but it seemed that the fan must have been running for a little while at least, pushing the smoke through the whole house. Pretty scary, but agree things could have been much worse. I told the HVAC companies that my first stipulation for a new unit was that it didn't blow up and catch on fire. Allan
Small fires in HVAC is more common than you would like to think. They usually aren't self perpetuating as they tend to run out of fuel quickly. Capacitor failure is usually associated with a power surge, often from the utility provider. Usually the top pops like the old jiffy pop popcorn. This is typically a symptom of another event, not a cause. Also this is not exclusive to that brand of heat pump. Many small fires start in duct heater control panels. That said, fires are much more common around and in fuel gas or oil burning equipment. Maintenence is helpful, but also don't use a mechanical room as a storge closet piled high with combustibles as I said above, little fires are common. Catastrophic fires are not.
