SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20170709-B114E-2147399121. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Rheem - Performance Platinum XE80T12EC55U0 (Rheem Performance Platinum Water Heater - 80 Gallon Electric). Incident: Our Rheem Performance Platinum water heater's control unit unexpectedly an spontaneously caught on fire on Sunday, July 9th 2017 at approximately 12:10AM. Significant damage was done to the control unit and water tank. Our fire alarm went off and we smelled a burning smell. After evacuating the family and pets from the house we called 911 and had the fire department come to the house. While waiting for the fire department I grabbed a fire extinguisher and did a quick look through the house. I discovered open flames coming out of the control unit panel of the hot water heater in our basement and was able to use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire and disconnected the electrical from the home power panel. The fire department arrived, inspected the water heater and surrounding area and confirmed that the fire was a direct cause of the water heater control unit. After looking online, I discovered that our water heater model has a recall. However, the manufacture date of our specific water heater is outside of the date range of the recall. The recall states that it is for manufacture dates from January 2014 to December 2014 and our water heater was manufactured on March of 2015. I am writing this to make you aware (and hopefully the rest of the public) that the issue described in the recall notice has happened to my water heater which was manufactured outside of the recall date range. My water heater details: MFR: Rheem Model Description: Performance Platinum Model Number: XE80T12EC55U0 Serial Number: M131519941 Manufacture Date: 26March2015 Capacity: 80 Gallons Install Da