My shower caught fire yesterday

[Idliketoteachtheworldtosing1]

Sorry I'm posting for traffic because I don't know where I stand.
Yesterday afternoon my youngest said that he was going to go for a shower, so I'm sitting downstairs when he starts shouting that there is a fire, I thought that he was just exaggerating because he tends to do that, I'm very slow but eventually get upstairs and he was right there was all smoke coming out from the bathroom (wet room fitted 2 years ago).
He had the sense to stop the shower and I opened the window and woke up my partner (he works nights so was sleeping) and my older son.
Phoned HA and she told OH to turn off at the fuse box and that someone will be out soon as it's an emergency.
Fast forward to electrician turning up who tells my son that he is a hero and his quick actions saved a fire breaking out (he's 10 but has SN)
It turns out that when the wet room was fitted they out an industrial breaker in the fuse box instead of a residential, today we are having murders with the HA as no one wants to take responsibility, I can't believe that we were so close to having a major fire someone has to take responsibility. Which brings me to my question, is it the person who signed the job off that is responsible or the team that fitted the wet room, we have a few outstanding repairs still, like a bloody hole in my kitchen ceiling for the past 3 months following a leak through the smoke alarm which they removed and haven't replaced.
My son is now terrified and ended up sleeping with me last night, I'm so angry but who do I hold responsible?
Sorry this is so long, I didn't want to drip feed, I will post a picture of the burned shower casing once OH gets home as it's on his phone.

Contact the Health and Safety Executive and they should advise/investigate.

Here is the photo

That's scary looking! But an industrial breaker instead of a residential breaker does not cause the unit to catch fire. More likely to be an internal fault with the unit or not properly fitted, e.g. not watertight. It may have stopped drawing power immediately rather than actually tripping the breaker.

Anyway, if you want to know for sure who is responsible then you would probably need to commission an independent report to determine the root cause, but what you can usefully do with that is unclear. Are the HA taking responsibility for replacing the shower unit? From the photo, it looks like there is no other damage.

If your smoke alarm has been removed due to a leak, has it been replaced with battery-powered smoke detectors in the meantime? If not you should be putting those up immediately. Don't wait for the HA to do it.

Hopefully they will replace the shower unit and make all right. Reassure your son that there is no danger now.

I think it’s the housing associations responsibility to identify and repair the problem. And it’s their problem to identify and resolve the issue to prevent it happening again- it’s not for you to investigate or receive a response with regards to that. Beyond an apology and them repairing.

How can the HA take responsibility the day after the event? They have no idea yet what happened - it could have been a fault in the system, a leak, misuse, power surge, - any of a dozen things.

It will be repaired and checked. When they've had chance to look into it then you ask why.

If the HA take responsibility before the facts are known, it could well fuck up their chances of suing the electricians who did the job. I think expecting the HA to hold their hands up the day after the event is a BU.

An investigation will need to be done before anyone admits liability.

It could be the shower manufacturer or the electrician or both, or it could be just unlucky. A breaker will stop electrocution but isn’t designed to stop a fire. This is why fire alarms are important. I think having a different breaker fitted is unlikely to have made any difference whatsoever.

Please be patient with your HA, (about this anyway, not the other problems!) it takes time to do things properly.

Well done to your son.

Unpleasant as it was - or rather what it could have been - you probably won't get to the bottom of it. What is important is that they a) repair the damage and b) your reassure your DS that it is unlikely to happen again.

We had an incident where one of the sensors on our security alarm kept intermittently triggering the alarm even though the alarm wasn't set and we were in the house. The alarm compay said the sensor was probably faulty and replaced it. It happened again. They claimed the wiring on the alarm was fine. I insisted they went up in the loft and checked it properly. Turned out one of the wires for the alarm had been installed across one of the spot light transformers for the bathroom below. Every time the light was on for any length of time the heat was enough to start burning scorching the alarm wire. It cost them about 3p's worth of solder to sort it but on reflection there could have been a very serious fire starting in the roof. We had no way of knowing if the alarm company had put the wire over the light or if the light had been installed under the alarm wire by the electrician as it had been done 8 years earlier. We just had to chalk it up to experience and be grateful that nothing more serious happened.

A similar fire happened with our old shower. I am fairly sure it was DH's installation that was to blame as we found out it wasn't completely watertight, but we just installed a new shower and there have been no problems since. It's very scary though being in the cubicle and smoke pouring out, at first I thought it was just steam but then it started to smell. It might not be the HA's fault.

For anyone to claim anything the fire device need to attend and have a look at this and it doesn’t matter that it is now out. This is what is called a “late fire”. And hopefully they can confirm what caused it. Phone your local service and get advice. 999 is fine for this.

Not fire device.... service obviously!