Oooof, Synology NAS power brick just went, SNO down, repeat SNO Down :(

can’t one make a fire with any level of wattage… i believe even a copper tread of a treaded wire should be able to start a fire of an AA (1 watt) battery, and human body puts out something like 68watts of heat energy… sure we can make fire but from raw heat out put it’s pretty difficult.

sure electricity does compact it into a small area… there are many safety concerns to be aware off when dealing with electricity, like don’t pack it in tinder or keep anything flammable near by because something will eventually start a fire…

i’m more worried about the devices that casually trust not to start a fire, than my macgyvered which i know the exact sketchyishness of.

besides if people are going to burn down there house, the odds are really past now… xmas is the time for that… with all the dried pine and live candles left unattended…

electricity is to be respected, all the way from 48 volts and up, it is much like fire… it will bite or eat you in many different devilish ways.

a good example could be how professional restoration workers accidentally burned down the Notre Dame, or how for decades aluminum wires were used in homes and caravans, making incredible fire hazards simply because people started using a new material they wasn’t familiar enough with for that particular usage.

most things when not understood can be very dangerous, the most dangerous part being the things one doesn’t consider.

The aluminum thing was actually pretty interesting, due to aluminums thermal expansion being very different from many other metals used for electrical connections, the wires will literally work themselves loose over time, thus begin to cause arcing, which is one of the most common ways that cause fire, especially today since most electrical stuff is in thermal set plastics, meaning they won’t burn.

another thing most people doesn’t realize about aluminum is just how highly explosive it actually is, granted it’s very difficult to make aluminum react in that way due to it’s amazing oxide layer, but doesn’t mean it’s a great plan for people to start pumping power through it lol…

but i digress…

it’s really easy to create disasters, the really tricky part is avoiding them, 100watts can certainly get some work done, but the real fire hazard i would argue is the surroundings, not a hot wire.

so i would say… always keep in mind that electronics in most cases can burn and should never be put in locations where they with easy can turn the rest of the house on fire… infact it’s a pretty good idea not to build houses so they can burn… it’s just a bad plan to live in a fire trap.

i know it’s been a while since a house fire took out an entire city, but it was why we stopped building like that…

I think that your confusing wattage with wire gauge size. Not every watt can cause a fire if the wire gauge is able to handle it. 1watt couldn’t catch a fire with wire gauge size of 18 but could catch fire with a gauge size of 30 to 36. Also the amount of amps being pulled makes a large difference with the size of wire that it is going though.

exactly why i wrote.

we are in complete agreement that the wattage required for heating to a specific temperature is related to the gauge of wire.

amps is part of the wattage in relation to the voltage. however like you say, we also need a definition of dimension to quantify the heating amount, so even the length of the wire would affect it…

it’s actually quite difficult to light stuff on fire with modern wires :smiley: arcing is the much more common igniter.
ofc with enough power and poor enough cables / exposed copper it becomes much easier, which is why we coat cables.

No, a higher wattage makes it significantly more dangerous and bad connections get get a lot hotter as a result or spark much more easily. Don’t diminish the dangers, you’re giving people dangerous advise.

The rest of your message is just a distraction.

funny i thought it was the voltage that makes things spark more easily and longer, and really we call it arcing. because it will create a conductive bridge that is sustained until the voltage drops.

the wattages have very little to do with the dangers of electricity…

10 watts is just as likely to create a fire, if treated incorrectly as 1000 watts is…

besides if you had arcing the power supply would more than likely go bad or cut out pretty damn fast… most modern stuff is really sensitive to emi.

Think of it as if it was water.

Voltage is the height difference between two sides.

Amperage is the pressure through a pipe.

Wattage is the effective flow of the two combined.


Either way- @Sasha, good job finding a solution, and taking steps to safely create a fix, to get your node and synology back up.

Funny how you pick one part of my response and think you can score clever points by ignoring the rest. High voltage can cause sparks, high amperage can cause heat. I mentioned both in reference to high wattage, which happens to be amperage x voltage.

A bad connection with twisted wires would act like a very thin wire and could get really hot or if there is a gap cause sparks. Both are a real danger when dealing with higher wattage (one with high amps and one with high volts). If it’s even dangerous at lower wattage, then why are you telling people twisted wires aren’t so bad?

Yeah, this part is just absolutely undeniably false…

I’m done discussing this now as it’s way too off topic already.

Careful! This is not an accurate analogy.

An accurate analogy is as follows.
Voltage is water pressure, current is flow rate and power is water flow at a given pressure (obstructions in the pipe will cause an increase of pressure for the same power). Energy will be an amount of water moved over time/power consumed over time. And resistance will be a constriction in the pipe, like pebbles, a narrowing or a difference in height.
It is not a perfect analogy but it gets the point across and everyone understands it.

Also, the fire likelihood increases with the power consumed, because there is a wider range of possible resistances available to cause it. The more power you have, the less likely it is that current limiting or a short circuit protection will be triggered before a fire happens. Short circuits are usually very low resistance so it is much harder to cause a fire because protection devices will activate.

Twisted wires can heat up and start a fire because they present a non-zero resistance (and higher than wire itself). In a properly twisted joint this will be negligible. This is for solid core wire. Fine stranded wires can’t be reliably twisted because they do not have mechanical rigidity to maintain their form when twisted. Connectors are recommended instead of wire twisting, for stranded wire basically mandatory. Use Wago 221 if you need to join wires and aren’t a qualified person, it’s easier to get right than wire twisting, also they are cheap so it’s a no-brainer.

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Has anyone used “solder seal”. I’ve seen adverts for it