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One thing I always wonder about these home server is this. When you are leaving house for a long vacation, is it really safe to leave some electrical appliances

One thing I always wonder about these home server is this. When you are leaving house for a long vacation, is it really safe to leave some electrical appliances working? Aren’t people afraid of fire hazard. What if there is a short circuit while you are away. A smelling short circuit would definitely burn something if left unattended for few days. For once there was a high voltage fault in my neighbourhood, destroying few lights, all mobile chargers plugged in and microwave left in standby. Had I not been home, and fault lasting more than 5min, things might have gone really bad. Now on, Whenever I leave my home for long duration, I just empty the Refrigerator and switch the house mains supply off before loving the house.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
Isn't a short circuit going to just blow the relevant fuses? Also most UPSes should protect from surges as well as power outages.
stingraycharles 6y ago
I can answer this as I’m currently on a two-week holiday and I have a small homelab running at home. First and foremost: fire alarms. Buy them, and use plenty of them. Secondly: let your neighbors know you’re on vacation. This implies a certain amount of trust with your neighbors, but it’s good to be on good terms with them for more reasons than just this. Thirdly: I get notifications if a server goes down or a fire alarm is triggered. With all this in place, I don’t worry at all. I may be somewhat ignorant or oblivious to certain risks, but in general I trust the safety net I just described.
amluto 6y ago
I find it surprising that service panels don’t have more extensive protection features. I would like my main breaker to trip under any of these conditions: - Sustained overvoltage. Any overvoltage lasting too long to be handled by a surge protector should trip the main breaker. - Sustained undervoltage. Some devices don’t like this. - Phase error. A two phase main should detect incorrect phase-to-neutral voltages and incorrect phase-to-phase voltages. A three phase main should also detect incorrect phase sequence. This should also catch some cases of a disconnected neutral. - Excessive neutral to ground current. In the US, for reasons I personally strongly dislike, every “service” has a connection from ground to neutral, usually in the meter box or the main panel. Various errors can cause substantial current to flow through this connection and can be dangerous. For example, if a house and the utility both have excellent grounds but the house’s neutral feed breaks, all the voltages can be close to correct and the house’s neutral current will return to the utility through ground. This is dangerous and will not be detected by common equipment. (A whole-house residual current detector would satisfy this, too. I think these are used in Europe.)
- xx_alpha_xx 6y ago
  we had our house neutral chewed through by mice in the electric meter - caused really bad problems :(
reaperducer 6y ago
One thing I always wonder about these home server is this. When you are leaving house for a long vacation, is it really safe to leave some electrical appliances working? I used to feel this way, but then I realized that the electronic devices don't know I'm away on vacation, or when I've returned, and they're just as likely to start a fire when I'm down the street getting coffee as on the other side of the planet. And when I return, my presence doesn't magically reset some catastrophe timer and everything's all better because I touched "base." That said, if I'm gone from home long enough that I turn off (or down) the refrigerator, then I'll unplug everything. So I guess I'm still a bit paranoid.
- outworlder 6y ago
  There are failure conditions that are not immediately catastrophic. The reasoning being that if you come home after a work day (or even better, after coming back from your coffee down the street) and see that a device malfunctioned you will attend to it. As opposed to leaving it plugged in and turned on for weeks while you are not there. A lot of devices will smoke before starting a fire, sometimes for quite a while until temps increase sufficiently for ignition. You would smell the smoke and figure out the culprit. Turning off everything is still worthwhile while you are away. This is just risk management. It is a small risk (maybe you have faulty appliances or house wiring? maybe you live in an earthquake or tornado area? etc) but the mitigation is also not very inconvenient. That said, if you can have a smoke detector pinging you (or a similar device - Amazon's cameras have a microphone that can alert you to alarms) it would be better. As you point out, stuff could happen while you are temporarily outside the home.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Short of being home and reacting immediately with a fire extinguisher when the smoke alarm is triggered I certainly agree with you that there's little that being away changes w/ respect to the electrical fire risk profile and potential for loss. Whether you're gone for a week or gone for 15 minutes makes little difference in responding to a fire. Responding to a water-related disaster is a different story, though, and worth bringing up. You might want to consider turning off your water at the main if you're going to be away from home for an extended period. I was fortunate in that the only water-related failure I've had personally was a ruptured water heater leaking into a floor drain of a 1st floor utility room. I know others who haven't been so lucky (having clothes washer hoses rupture, fixtures fail, etc) and have had water running inside their home for an extended period (several days, in one case). Until someone notices the local municipality reading excessive usage, a neighbor noticing water running out a patio door, etc) the damage continues and, to add insult to injury, you're also getting charged for the water / sewer usage.
0xffff2 6y ago
Before the pandemic I spent ~1/3 of my time away from home anyway (work during the week, either out camping or otherwise out and about for at least 1 in 3 weekends). I certainly didn't unplug everything every time I left for work. I don't really see a significant difference in risk profile for a week long vacation.
formerly_proven 6y ago
Electrical fires inside stuff that isn't the cheapest straight-from-china import shit are incredibly rare. Most fires causes are A) very old wiring that has never been attended to but loaded to the max B) people messing with mains wiring and causing a fire (e.g. bridging thermal cut off switches in cable drums) and the occasional person drilling into a cable in the wall and hitting it just-so that PE is untouched but L and N are getting just cozy enough to start a fire without tripping the line breaker.
michaelt 6y ago
> What if there is a short circuit while you are away. If you believe fires start at random, there's no difference between a 2 week holiday and 9 weeks working 8 hours a day.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

Isn't a short circuit going to just blow the relevant fuses? Also most UPSes should protect from surges as well as power outages.

stingraycharles 6y ago

I can answer this as I’m currently on a two-week holiday and I have a small homelab running at home. First and foremost: fire alarms. Buy them, and use plenty of them. Secondly: let your neighbors know you’re on vacation. This implies a certain amount of trust with your neighbors, but it’s good to be on good terms with them for more reasons than just this. Thirdly: I get notifications if a server goes down or a fire alarm is triggered. With all this in place, I don’t worry at all. I may be somewhat ignorant or oblivious to certain risks, but in general I trust the safety net I just described.

amluto 6y ago

I find it surprising that service panels don’t have more extensive protection features. I would like my main breaker to trip under any of these conditions: - Sustained overvoltage. Any overvoltage lasting too long to be handled by a surge protector should trip the main breaker. - Sustained undervoltage. Some devices don’t like this. - Phase error. A two phase main should detect incorrect phase-to-neutral voltages and incorrect phase-to-phase voltages. A three phase main should also detect incorrect phase sequence. This should also catch some cases of a disconnected neutral. - Excessive neutral to ground current. In the US, for reasons I personally strongly dislike, every “service” has a connection from ground to neutral, usually in the meter box or the main panel. Various errors can cause substantial current to flow through this connection and can be dangerous. For example, if a house and the utility both have excellent grounds but the house’s neutral feed breaks, all the voltages can be close to correct and the house’s neutral current will return to the utility through ground. This is dangerous and will not be detected by common equipment. (A whole-house residual current detector would satisfy this, too. I think these are used in Europe.)

xx_alpha_xx 6y ago
we had our house neutral chewed through by mice in the electric meter - caused really bad problems :(

reaperducer 6y ago

One thing I always wonder about these home server is this. When you are leaving house for a long vacation, is it really safe to leave some electrical appliances working? I used to feel this way, but then I realized that the electronic devices don't know I'm away on vacation, or when I've returned, and they're just as likely to start a fire when I'm down the street getting coffee as on the other side of the planet. And when I return, my presence doesn't magically reset some catastrophe timer and everything's all better because I touched "base." That said, if I'm gone from home long enough that I turn off (or down) the refrigerator, then I'll unplug everything. So I guess I'm still a bit paranoid.

outworlder 6y ago
There are failure conditions that are not immediately catastrophic. The reasoning being that if you come home after a work day (or even better, after coming back from your coffee down the street) and see that a device malfunctioned you will attend to it. As opposed to leaving it plugged in and turned on for weeks while you are not there. A lot of devices will smoke before starting a fire, sometimes for quite a while until temps increase sufficiently for ignition. You would smell the smoke and figure out the culprit. Turning off everything is still worthwhile while you are away. This is just risk management. It is a small risk (maybe you have faulty appliances or house wiring? maybe you live in an earthquake or tornado area? etc) but the mitigation is also not very inconvenient. That said, if you can have a smoke detector pinging you (or a similar device - Amazon's cameras have a microphone that can alert you to alarms) it would be better. As you point out, stuff could happen while you are temporarily outside the home.
EvanAnderson 6y ago
Short of being home and reacting immediately with a fire extinguisher when the smoke alarm is triggered I certainly agree with you that there's little that being away changes w/ respect to the electrical fire risk profile and potential for loss. Whether you're gone for a week or gone for 15 minutes makes little difference in responding to a fire. Responding to a water-related disaster is a different story, though, and worth bringing up. You might want to consider turning off your water at the main if you're going to be away from home for an extended period. I was fortunate in that the only water-related failure I've had personally was a ruptured water heater leaking into a floor drain of a 1st floor utility room. I know others who haven't been so lucky (having clothes washer hoses rupture, fixtures fail, etc) and have had water running inside their home for an extended period (several days, in one case). Until someone notices the local municipality reading excessive usage, a neighbor noticing water running out a patio door, etc) the damage continues and, to add insult to injury, you're also getting charged for the water / sewer usage.

0xffff2 6y ago

Before the pandemic I spent ~1/3 of my time away from home anyway (work during the week, either out camping or otherwise out and about for at least 1 in 3 weekends). I certainly didn't unplug everything every time I left for work. I don't really see a significant difference in risk profile for a week long vacation.

formerly_proven 6y ago

Electrical fires inside stuff that isn't the cheapest straight-from-china import shit are incredibly rare. Most fires causes are A) very old wiring that has never been attended to but loaded to the max B) people messing with mains wiring and causing a fire (e.g. bridging thermal cut off switches in cable drums) and the occasional person drilling into a cable in the wall and hitting it just-so that PE is untouched but L and N are getting just cozy enough to start a fire without tripping the line breaker.

michaelt 6y ago

> What if there is a short circuit while you are away. If you believe fires start at random, there's no difference between a 2 week holiday and 9 weeks working 8 hours a day.