A 60-year-old man woke up to find that an electrical fault and a leaking water pipe had combined to set his house on fire.

The small fire beneath floorboards at the home in Hermitage Road, Dartmouth, was discovered at 5.30am on Monday after all the lights in the house went out as fuses blew.

The householder managed to get to the fire himself after pulling up floorboards.

Dartmouth firefighters checked out the area with a thermal imaging camera to ensure the small fire was out.

Watch manager Mark Cresswell warned: 'Had he been asleep and the fire had caught there was no smoke detector fitted in the house so we are going to return to fit a couple of smoke detectors free of charge.'

He said that two fire engines had been called to the house after reports of the early morning house fire.

'Basically the gentleman woke up in the night and turned a light on and the electricity had gone. He went downstairs and found the fuse box had tripped.

'He flipped the fuse box back on and heard a bang and saw a fire at the skirting board.

'He turned the electricity back off but there was still smoke,' he said.

'When we got there he had lifted the floorboards. He had had a water leak and one of the cables had lost some of its sheathing. The water had gone on that and caused a short.

'It was nothing major. A bit of the floor joist was affected.

'We checked with a thermal imaging camera and made sure the electricity was isolated until he could get an electrician in.'