djpep55 wrote:
Quote
Your experience is that the increase in resistance will melt the receptacle and conductor at under 20 amps?

with a loose connection & a load.. Absolutely!
I had a service call to a new home once.. Home was only about 3 years old... The customer almost had a fire in a kitchen receptacle.. I got there & the wall was seriously scorched, plastic 118N box melted like a shrinky-dink, recept looked like something in the back of my fireplace.. I closely examined the recept & noticed something peculiar... The terminal screws were still backed out to factory set! [Linked Image] the installer only wrapped the conductors around the screws not bothering to tighten them down!... I checked EVERY device in that house & found over half were that way! [Linked Image] [Linked Image] The load on the circuit was a 15A 120V jacuzzi plugged in the WP recept outside, which fed through here & from a counter GFI.. (Funny, I thought you weren't allowed to put other loads on the kitchen counter circuits sans the dining room or a couple other kitchen loads).. I wish I had pics from that place.. I only had a few left in my Polaroid at the time & gave them to the customer..

That was an extreme case, but I come across them alot when people start using those little "plug in" heaters..

-Randy

PS.. click here for more "burning fun" https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000348.html