"Elect e fried" lady bugs

[newbury]

I've a switch for overhead lights in one of my workshops that started acting erratically.  I hate working on electricity ever since I shorted wires on a wall plug when I was about 4 years old.
The switch wouldn't turn off and was slowly smoking. Opened up and found about 10 dead lady bugs.
/edit - don't know why the pic shows up landscape until I click on it.

 

[bullbreaker]

Yeah we get that down here alot on water well pressure switches with ants and lizards in them .

 

[oosik]

YUM!!! Crispy morning snacks. Around here it's - sage bugs. Quite small - ovoid shaped - smell like fresh sage when crushed. It's an April thing here. Get them in the house by the hundreds. They don't bite - don't get into anything - they are just there. My solution - rechargeable hand vac.

 

[k0ua]

These things happen. More likely ants around here. Replace switch and go on with life.

 

[Diggin It]

I'll take fake lady bugs ... (some sort of Asian beetle, or so they say) any day over the wasps I found in a box this morning. I put a 6 x 8 x 4 BUD box on the side of the house about 2' above ground a few months back as an entry and wire pull point for a couple of outdoor cameras. I need to check on something this morning and as I reached for one of the locking latches I noticed a wasp fly away from the bottom of it. I stood back and carefully popped the latches and raised the hinged lid. Once it was open, there were about a dozen mean sets of eyes looking at me. A broom handle knocked the 3" diameter nest out onto the ground.

Now, I have to seal the hole they found to get in.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

My BIL (RIP) was a telephone installer and repairman. He worked a case of trouble where the phone had quit working. He said it was a wall phone, and when he took it down, the wall was instantly black with cockroaches...they had eaten all of the insulation of the wiring, and left enough poop to fertilize your garden.

 

[dgeos]

So, I'm getting the Kubota ready for winter (if it ever comes), and I see that the battery needs charged. I plug in the battery charger...no power. I try a work light and...still no power. I check the breaker box. The breaker for the circuit hasn't tripped but there is about a half inch of dead lady bugs and stink bugs in the bottom of the cabinet.
The first outlet on the circuit is a GFI outlet. It appears to be ok but neither the test nor the reset button will work. I deduce that I must have a bad GFI outlet. Off I go to Home Despot for a new one.
I go to replace the GFI outlet, but before I throw the breaker, I check to see if there is power going into the GFI. Circuit tester shows NO POWER.
I go back to the breaker box, and my voltmeter shows no power coming out of the breaker even though it is "on"!?!
I remove the breaker and check it for continuity. My ohmmeter shows no continuity through the breaker even in the "on" position. Huh? A bad breaker?
I happen to shake the breaker and out drop a couple of lady bug carcasses. I continue shaking the breaker and about a teaspoon's worth of lady bugs and parts thereof fall out. I work the switch on the breaker while shaking and even more fall out.
Turns out that a circuit breaker is not a completely sealed unit. There is a vent slot - on mine, it's on the same side as the screw terminal. Enough lady bugs had crawled up into the vent slot to open the breaker's contacts and keep them from closing. After shaking and working the switch until there are no more droppings, I check the breaker again and now I have continuity. I replace the breaker, turn it on, and now all is well at the original GFI outlet.
This is all new to me. I've never heard of insects causing an electrical problem like this.
Hope this helps if you have a similar situation. Please share your experiences with this sort of thing.
Thanks.

 

[Hay Dude]

Well, we’re already EATIN’ bugs now so there’s that…..

 

[oosik]

I've never had bugs cause an electrical problem. Not because I don't have lots of seasonal bugs. All my electrical boxes are tightly sealed. Just a thought - bugs are looking for a safe place and a dry place.

 

[grsthegreat]

Anything that has a contact point can have problems with ants, bugs, etc.

with me, every time I service generators I have to open transfer switches and check the contact points behind the bakelight flash plate on the transfer mechanism. Reason is, stink bugs love to get in there and nest. Then power fails, switch tries to flip, but bugs get in way and power doesn’t transfer.

 

[MossRoad]

I've a switch for overhead lights in one of my workshops that started acting erratically. I hate working on electricity ever since I shorted wires on a wall plug when I was about 4 years old.
The switch wouldn't turn off and was slowly smoking. Opened up and found about 10 dead lady bugs.
/edit - don't know why the pic shows up landscape until I click on it.

Couple questions/observations.

All the knockouts appear to be in place in that box, so how did they get in there?

Ladybugs aren't known to eat wiring (they eat aphid, mostly)... did you see any damage to the wire?

I would guess the switch was bad/going bad, or, the wire connections to the switch weren't tight, and that caused the heat and switch to malfunction. Ladybugs are known to seek out warm spots, so it wouldn't surprise me to see them in there, however they got in.

Got a picture of the switch?

 

[ponytug]

@MossRoad most "Rainproof", aka 3R, enclosures have pretty substantial weep holes by design, and many that I have seen have screw holes used in other versions of the enclosure but open in the one in question.

Then there is my pump house which is down the hill from the power pole by 175' or so. It is about the size and shape of an outhouse. When we bought the place, inspected the pump controls and noticed a missing knockout, and put it on the mental fix list. In the "one thing leads to another" category, it was a large knockout, 1", 1.25"+/-. I didn't have any on hand, and the local places did not have it, so it got moved down the do list. Time passed, and one winter, our rainy season, I happened to open the pump house door, and immediately thought "OMG", followed by "WTF?"

All conduits leak, right? So when our ground saturates, there is a garden hose worth of water coming into the box at a significant flow and pressure, along the main power feed. The mystery of the missing knockout was explained as a necessary item to drain the box. Several electricians have declined to do anything as the mice don't get in, and it isn't a safety issue in their minds...

Luckily no lady bugs nor mice find it attractive...

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

Yep. I just didn't see any obvious holes in the OP's picture for the ladybugs to get in.

Speaking of water, I went into a mech room for quarterly inspections week before Christmas, and saw water coming out under the door. Looked inside and there was a large electrical panel with a stream of water coming out of it. Always pleasant surprise!

Turned out the conduits in the box went outside between buildings, one of them separated under a lawn that was bowl-shaped right over it. Then it rained. It was basically a floor drain in the lawn.

They built a moat around the bowl and waited for it to dry out before making repairs.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

I repaired consumer electronics 43 years, mostly TVs. I could write a book.
In the early 1970s most TVs people had were still tube type. One service call on an RCA console customer said no picture, just making a loud noise.
I removed back and as soon as high voltage came up I heard loud arcing. So I removed one screw that opened the high voltage cage (flyback transformer). It was like a Frankenstein horror movie! A mouse had gotten inside. It was standing upright, arms outstretched and 30,000 Volts coming off the top of it's head to the 3A3 high voltage rectifier tube!
I unplugged TV and it fell onto their carpet...smoking & stiff as a board. There wasn't anything much to clean out with a shop rag but now the set worked fine. How it got in there is a mystery...but mice & insects can get into some amazingly small openings.

 

[Alan W.]

Buddy of mine called this week saying his heat pump was working fine but the outside fan would never shut off.
I had him check to see if the thermostat had gone bad by pulling it. Fan was still on. Told him the contacts were probably stuck on the outside unit.
Turns out a mud dauber had built above the contacts and a piece of the nest fell into the contacts jamming them together.
Instead of cleaning it out thoroughly his just knocked the piece free. This caused some of the nest to fall into the compressor contacts keeping it from running. Now as my granny always said he’s gotta lick his calf over again.