Thread: Preventing and dealing with fires in the workshop

Best container reuse effort I've seen was a camping acquaintance who kept his cooking oil in dishwashing liquid bottle as it sealed well and had a nice squirtable action for use.
But he also kept his real dishwashing liquid in an original one.

Very amusing seeing the "oil" foam when he put it on his kebabs over the campfire

Steve

When I was in my 20s I took my 4 brothers (oldest one was 7 years younger than me) on a camping trip down south in WA. At one point we camped at teh Stirling ranges and decided to scramble up Bluff Knoll for s sunrise breakfast. As we had plenty of hands we were able to bring a frypan, water, billy, small gas burner, baked beans, tomatoes, and bacon and eggs. To save weight I transferred some cooking oil into a small plastic shampoo bottle - it was was cleaned but the shampoo aroma must have infused into the plastic and then back into the oil.

Just to make matters more unpleasant it was raining, and we got soaked and the cold with the strong breeze that was blowing. No worries I thought a hot breakfast at the top will save it all. Imagine the aroma when the oil heated up - it was so strong we could barely eat teh food but we were so hungry we ate it anyway.

Ive had a couple of small fires in my shed. Mostly from welding and grinding. All of them were snuffed out as I caught them early. Luckily!

There are a couple of reasons why a fire in my shed would be awful; Mostly because I don't want to loose my shed and all my stuff. Secondly, since I'm employed as a firefighter, having the local fire service turn up to a shed fire at my house would also be embarrassing and the stories that would generated after such a job would last the rest of my career!

In terms of fire suppression, I don't have a dry powder extinguisher. I have seen the damage they do and often they create more damage than they prevent. I suppose that if it was a choice between loosing your shed and discharging a 1 Kg AB(E) dry powder then the choice is obvious but the damage to machine slideways, precision bearings, motors and electronics means that the damage from that dry powder would be seen for many months after the incident. Also many months after the insurance claim would be settled.

A C02 extinguisher is better for sure but bear in mind that wind can greatly diminish its effectiveness.

My weapon of choice is a vaporising liquid type extinguisher. The older style of these were banned many years ago (except for some exempt industries such as aviation) but a newer type was developed a few years back. They are identified as a red extinguisher body with a yellow band.

On operation, they squirt out as a clear liquid but then quickly vaporise. They are very effective on most fire types, (perhaps not oil fires) they don't suffer as much from wind, produce no mess and do not cause thermal stress on sensitive electronics.

Bang for buck, you can't go past a few fire blankets either.

As usual, prevention is the best. A clean and ordered shed with good house keeping is the best way to prevent fires. I'm smiling as I say this because I'm the worst person to be pushing this!

Ive attended many shed fires as part of my work. They always leave me with a sense of loss on behalf of the owner, especially sheds like we have with actual machines etc.

Most fires I attend, I put them out and go home and feel no real sense of loss. It is what it is, people have insurance and life goes on. which is kind of weird because you would think that loosing your home would be worse than loosing your shed. But often our sheds are full of machines that were rebuilt and had many hours spend on them to bring them back from the scrap yard. Insurance often can't replace that stuff.

Oh one last thing. Many shed/garage fires I have attended were discovered around the 1am - 4am hours of the morning after people were in bed. Some of these were dodgy electrical issues but there have been a few that were started after the owner had been welding or grinding many hours earlier during the day. So don't assume that a fire can't start many, many hours after any shed activity. Unfortunately, these fires are usually well and truely developed before they are discovered and 000 called, which means extensive fire and water (sorry!) damage.

The last shed fire I attended a couple months ago was interesting. Received the call around 3am. Arrive to find smoke billowing out of a large (12 x 18M approx) shed.

Of course the electric roller doors no longer worked so I had to cut through them with a demo saw.

We managed to restrict the fire to the rear corner but the heat and smoke did extensive damage to many parts of the shed that were not impacted by the actual fire. This included the destruction of 2 small motorbikes owned by the kids.

Anyway, after it was all out, we couldn't work out how it started. This really annoys us because part of the job is working out the cause. It's a part of the fire report that needs to be filled out and it's an interesting part of my job.

Anyway, reluctantly we admit defeat and call in Fire Investigation Unit.

A day later they ring us with the findings; Turns out that some rats had decided to make a nest at the rear wall of the shed under a bench. Their nesting material included material of an organic nature (leaves, twigs, grass etc) and some oily rags.

It turns out that the compressed natured of the material in the nest and the oily rags created a situation of spontaneous combustion. How unlucky is that!

Just goes to show, there are any number of combinations and permutations to bring you unstuck.

Simon

Thank you for your post Simon,

My wife's brother is a firefighter and has descrbed the collateral damage wrought by dry powder extingquishers. Several years ago BobL told the story here of a dry powder extingquisher being used to put out a small fire in a laboratory at Curtin University and the massive damage caused by the powder. I've tried searching for Bob's post but have come up empty handed. Any chance of a link if you read this Bob? It's certainly worth reading.

Bob.

Originally Posted by Anorak Bob

Thank you for your post Simon,
My wife's brother is a firefighter and has descrbed the collateral damage wrought by dry powder extingquishers. Several years ago BobL told the story here of a dry powder extingquisher being used to put out a small fire in a laboratory at Curtin University and the massive damage caused by the powder. I've tried searching for Bob's post but have come up empty handed. Any chance of a link if you read this Bob? It's certainly worth reading.
Bob.

Cheers Bob. In post number 8 of this thread I describe a cut down version of that story. When I think back on it this was one of the most stressful periods of my working life. My boss was very supportive but my bosses boss was not and was even antagonistic to me about it. It wrecked a PhD students project, two lab staff members left during that time and it contributed to my career burnout. We did get some monetary compensation for it but it only covered a small fraction of the lost time.

What I have found since is a few photos
This was the instrument that was affected and the arrow shows the location of the chiller that caught fire
You don't get much for a million dollars
tritonnew.JPG

Below shows the chiller about the size of small bar fridge that caught fire. - ie it was a small fire.
The dry power was about 5-10 mm thick all over this thing after the extinguisher discharge.
The dust remaining is the dry powder from the extinguisher AFTER the bulk of the dry powder had been vacuumed up off the floor
02 chillerp.jpg

The lab had 14, 600 x 1200 mm of super HEPA filters running at the time so a considerable amount of the dry powder dust and smoke ended up being removed from the lab by these hepas.
This also protected the other machines and equipment in the lab and is probably why the fire alarms didn't go off.

Unfortunately the burning chiller was right next to the million dollar mass spectrometer which had a bank of 6 x 150mm cooling fans sucking air through the machine.

This was what was inside the instrument before $40K was seen on the clean up
Triton1p.jpg

Every board was covered in dust
Triton2p.jpg

After the $40k clean up the instrument was tested and although it worked O we felt like we could not trust it long term so we fully wrapped up in plastic wrap and it satfor 6 months while the various parties argued about what should happen

When we unwrapped it to dispose of it this is what we saw.
Even though every board had been removed and washed in solvent more dust seemed to come out of the nooks and crannies.
Triton3p.jpg

It was really evident on any acrylic covers
Triton5pp.jpg
And in the bottom of the cabinet
Triton4pp.jpg

Thank you very much Bob.

The collateral damage wasn't just physical. As is often the case there is a far reaching human cost.

Bob.

Originally Posted by Anorak Bob

Thank you very much Bob.

The collateral damage wasn't just physical. As is often the case there is a far reaching human cost.

Bob.

Correct. Even though specialised commercial cleaners came in for a week we still had to do an extra cleaning and refit new HEPA filters, plus we were the only ones within a radius of 2500 kms that could do the testing which took weeks. The human effect was compounded when the two staff left (and in no way do I blame them) as this created a domino effect that put load onto the remaining people. The PhD student struggled along and needed as months extra financial support to complete the PhD (not to mention 6 months lost wages). etc etc