Received a late frantic call from a tenant. This tenant was renting the 2nd floor of a shop unit running a cafe business. The electricity in his shop was abruptly cut off and when he investigated the junction box, he found that the circuit breaker was emitting lots of heat and there was a burning smell coming out of the junction box. As there was already no electricity coming into the shop, he pull out the circuit breaker and found that it was partly melted already (circuit breakers have plastic coverings).
I arrived at the scene at 11:30PM with an extra circuit breaker, the tenant had to close shop for the day, I attempted to put the new circuit breaker inside the junction box and sparks flew from the new circuit breaker, so I quickly removed it from the junction box. Upon careful inspection, I notice the wires at the junction box also had melted, the tenant used a test pen and found that no electricity was flowing through the junction box. Had to wait until the next day to called the TNB contractors to do it. The tenant was not quite happy as he wanted it done the night itself. This is quite understandable as his business will be impacted without electricity. I called 2 electrical contractors but they could not come, one went back to Indonesia already while the other is not willing to come during the night to fix stuff.
The shop is around 15 years old already so it is a normal wear and tear problem. The takeaway from this episode is that I need to have more contractor contacts and not depend on 1 or 2 contractors.
Update 30/08/15
Electrician came and check the problem, he found that the tenant was using 1 single plug point to connect too many electricity appliances. 1 single plug point was used to connect chiller, fridge and rice cooker. Alas, the only problem is that he could not fix the problem as his workers were not around as it was a public holiday. First thing then was to advise the tenant not to connect too many electrical appliances to a single plug point. The electrician will come back another day with his workers to pull another electrical point to alleviate the problem.
Update 30/08/15
Electrician came and check the problem, he found that the tenant was using 1 single plug point to connect too many electricity appliances. 1 single plug point was used to connect chiller, fridge and rice cooker. Alas, the only problem is that he could not fix the problem as his workers were not around as it was a public holiday. First thing then was to advise the tenant not to connect too many electrical appliances to a single plug point. The electrician will come back another day with his workers to pull another electrical point to alleviate the problem.