Woman Buys a Cute $5 Tabletop Fountain From Dollarama. Then Her Dog Starts Freaking Out: ‘Almost Burnt My House Down’
This tiny fountain was supposed to be relaxing. It proved to be the exact opposite.
A cheap home decor find can feel like an easy way to make a room a little nicer. After all, for $5, there’s not much to lose if it ends up looking less impressive at home than it did on the shelf.
But a disappointing purchase is one thing. Seeing smoke come from something plugged in inside the house turns a small impulse buy into a much bigger concern, especially when it happens only minutes after setting it up.
TikTok creator Emily Mills (@soemilymills) thought she had found a cute tabletop fountain at Dollarama. Her dog was not impressed from the beginning, but it soon became clear that the noise would be the least of her problems.
Then viewers noticed something
Emily initially shows the fountain running at home, expecting it to be “nice and soothing.” Instead, she compares the sound to a dentist’s office and notes that her dog hates it. Adding more water makes it quieter, but also messier.
Then the fountain suddenly stops working and begins smoking. “Oh my god, it’s literally smoking,” Emily says. After noticing what she describes as a fire-like smell, she moves it outside. “It smells like fire, so I put it outside now,” she explains. Emily then shows the $5 product’s packaging, which identifies it as a “tabletop water fountain with natural river stones” and advertises “relaxing gentle water with ambient glow.”
“Nothing was relaxing about that,” Emily jokes. Watching the footage again also revealed that the fountain’s light never worked. Unsure whether she got a defective unit or if the product itself was the problem, Emily gave it a “zero out of ten” and said she would “definitely” not recommend it. She described the experience as a “cute dollar store find almost burnt my house down.”
The comments quickly turned to Emily’s laptop charger, with viewers questioning whether it was compatible with the fountain. “Your laptop charger definitely overheated it and caused it to function the way it did and start smoking,” one person claimed. “You blew it up twin,” another joked. A third wrote, “using your laptop charger is CRAZY work.” However, Emily does not share the fountain’s required voltage or the charger’s output, so it is unclear whether the charger caused the malfunction.
Still, one commenter argued that products should be safe regardless of price. “Thank you for sharing this. More people need to see this,” they wrote. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s $5.00 or $500.00 if it’s sold by a store, it needs to be safe and work properly.” Dollarama has not commented on the situation.
What to do if this happens
Whatever caused Emily’s fountain to emit smoke, unusual noises, smoke, sparks, or burning smells should not be ignored. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission advises unplugging appliances that smoke or smell unusual and stopping use of damaged or malfunctioning electrical products.
Small electrical decorations and appliances are also better left unplugged when they are not being used. The same caution applies to items involving heat or open flames, as one woman discovered when she noticed an unusual light from her Bath & Body Works candle and found the entire candle on fire. Her experience shows why potentially heat-producing decor should not be left unattended.
Smoke can also be an early warning that something electrical is going wrong even when there is no visible flame. That became clear when a Dallas renter searched her apartment for the source of a strange noise and found a floor socket hissing and smoking. Maintenance later reportedly discovered water inside the socket.
For powered products, consumers should check the electrical requirements before using a different adapter or charger. If a device starts smoking, sparking, overheating, or smelling like it is burning, continuing to use it could make the problem more serious.
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