SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20140228-D3CBC-2147446847. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Amana GPH1348H41BC (Amana Heat Pump For Heating and Cooling Home Model Number: GPH1348H41BC Serial Number: 1205314254). Incident: We bought a forclosed home and bought a brand new heat pump unit to hook up. This unit is about 2 years old. Recently we had an ice storm and lost power. Once we knew the power was off my husband turned off the breaker to the heat pump. This would prevent the heat pump from running once power was restored. My husband new if power was restored and there was ice on the heat pump it may tear up something. Once power was restored 2 days later after the ice storm, the temperature in the house was 58 degrees. In order to keep the heat strips from running because we didnt want to use so much electricity my husband turned the breaker on but we set the thermostat temperature to 59 degrees. The heat pump only had to heat the house within 1 degree of the outside temperature. This was on 14 February Valentines day of 2014. Once we heard the unit come on and felt air coming through the vents we assumed all was ok. We left the thermostat set on 59 degrees and left the house to go out for Valentines day date night. We left the house approximately at 5:30pm to go out. At that time the heat pump was functioning normal. We got a call at approximately 10:30pm telling us our house was on fire and we needed to come home. We rushed home to find our home fully engulfed in flames and most of it already gone. They were not able to save anything in our home. We lost everything. The fire chief filled out a fire report and has said the origin of the fire was "Heat Pump" and the possible cause is the Heat Pump Motor. The material ignited was "Flooring" - what we believe happened was the heat pump caugh