Claire Reid
A woman has issued a ‘terrifying’ warning after discovering the reason her bedroom had a fishy smell.
Claudia Anderson, 26, explained that her room suddenly began to have an odd fishy odour that hung around for weeks and it turned out to have a very dangerous cause.
In a clip on TikTok from her @mrsclaudiaanderson account, she said: "Here's something I didn't know about a potential electrical fire hazard until it happened to me.
"Now, for a few weeks, me and my husband were walking into our bedroom and thinking, 'oh my God, it stinks of fish in our bedroom.'
Advert
"We didn't want to tell anyone about it because you're a bit embarrassed."
Claudia says she and her husband decided that smell must be coming from their en-suite and set about doing a deep clean in the hopes of eradicating the scent.
"So we took out the U bend from the sink, made sure the toilet was super clean, cleaned the plug hole in the shower… everything,” she said.
“But the smell still lingered.”
Advert
With the cleaning not doing the job, Claudia took to Google for answers and was surprised to learn that the smell could be caused by a serious electrical problem.
"I literally would never, ever have guessed that that is what that is... ever," she says.
"So I messaged my brother-in-law who's an electrician, and he said, 'yeah, that's probably something you should get checked out.'
"So I called my father-in-law, who also used to be an electrician, and he came around this morning and had a look."
Claudia then pointed to the fuse box and explained: "This is attached to our en-suite and there's our bedroom.
Advert
"So every time we walked in here, we were like, 'this smells like fish,' but it's actually this.
"There was a wire that had become disconnected, and I don't know if you can see but it was actually melting the plastic on the inside of the socket.
"Look at that. That is terrifying! We were so, so lucky that we caught that before that burst into flames."
Claudia then urged people not to ignore any fishy smells in their homes and to call out an electrician as soon as possible.
Advert
The clip soon went viral with many people saying a similar thing had happened to them.
One wrote: “I had this - bought an 80s house where nothing had been changed and someone had drilled through cables in the walls cooker cable in the kitchen, scary!"
Another said: "That happened to us but it was plastic near the light bulb."