Have you ever known a mains plug overheat or catch fire?

Mickey666

Only once, when I moved into my current house.  

It was the plug on a multi-way socket strip. It was discoloured and showed signs of overheating around the live pin. When I opened the plug I discovered a masterclass in electrical abuse.  The earth wire was not connected, the live and neutral were reversed and the fuse had been replaced with a bolt!
The consumer unit was not much better.  It had the old style fuses using fuse wire.  The fuse for the power circuit on which that multi-way adaptor was plugged into had TWO lengths of 30A fuse wire. 
Also, the garage electrics which had been used as a workshop, with various large power tools including a lathe, had been connected to one of the house lighting circuits.  The fuse for that circuit contained 30A fuse wire.
Clearly the previous owner had his own ways of solving the constant blowing of fuses!

Needless to say, one of my first renovation jobs was rewiring and installing modern consumer units!

Debran

Yes.  Kept getting a strange smell in the kitchen quite a few years ago.  Eventually realised it was a new AEG washing machine plug that was overheating.  The plug and socket had gone very brown and both had to be replaced.

-taff

Yes, a friends dishwasher plug overheated and caught fire [when it was not in use], burning the kitchen and living room. Last year.

mwarby

fenwick458 said:

never catch fire, but i've seen them get so hot they turn brittle and disintegrate when you touch them, which exposes live parts.
all electrical stuff is made with self extinguishing plastics, you can't set fire to it if you try.
most electrical fires start by setting something easily combustible on fire thats next to where the overheating occurs

In the case of a well made plug to British standards yes. If you were to take an Chinese made none compliant plug (such as the ones with no fuse) I wouldn’t be so sure

avoidtheupsidedownbottles

Quite surprising how few examples reported.  Can't really draw conclusions from a small straw poll but I was expecting more. 

silvercar

Yes, a british made quality hair dryer. I strongly suspect the wire had been twisted around the dryer so many times that there were breaks in it and "arching" caused the problem. Flames appeared where the wire joins the plug.

Murmansk

Not exactly what you asked but may be of interest
I went to an evening class in a school and the tutor plugged two 3KW fan heaters into one extension lead that was left largely uncoiled. The coiled extension lead lit up red like an electric fire and all the plastic insulation melted/burnt off it. It was quite dramatic. Don't know if the plug heated up too!!!

mwarby

given copper is a decent conductor of heat, I'd say if it was glowing red, the pins would be pretty hot

ben999

Murmansk said:

Not exactly what you asked but may be of interest
I went to an evening class in a school and the tutor plugged two 3KW fan heaters into one extension lead that was left largely uncoiled. The coiled extension lead lit up red like an electric fire and all the plastic insulation melted/burnt off it. It was quite dramatic. Don't know if the plug heated up too!!!

Likewise; I went to an evening class and the tutor told us never to coil electrical wiring as it causes severe over-heating. Something I have never forgotten.

 More recently, I discovered an extension lead in the kitchen which was glowing red hot and flickering. It was trailing underneath the gas boiler and there was a very slight drip from the boiler falling directly on to it: some water had accumulated inside the extension. I caught it just in time and dread to think what might have happened if I had not spotted it.

 I never coil electrical leads and never put them anywhere remotely near a water source (that might leak).