Shop caught fire today

As a electrician I've seen tons of examples in remodels, demos etc where mice have eaten the entire insulation off the wire. Just three bare wires in between a stud cavity. Never a fire but usually a dead mouse or two plus complaints of breakers tripping, especially with Arc fault breakers.

Years ago I happened to click on a You tube video where using a 9 volt battery and some steel wool you could start a fire. Yeap I already knew that. What came next was a guy standing in a burned out attached garage to his house that was partially destroyed by a fire and he said "I sure wish I had seen this video before."
He was being a safety conscious homeowner who replaced all the 9V batteries in his smoke detectors and thought he was doing the right thing. Problem was he threw them in a garbage bag with household garbage and placed it in his attached garage. Next thing he knew his neighbor was banging on his door yelling FIRE! Always put the plastic tab on used 9V batteries or wrap with electrical tape carefully before just tossing in the garbage.
 
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A very good point about safety for sure.

Just a note on posting Amazon links, rather than copy the total LONG URL, click on the little "up arrow" in the lower left corner of the image displaying the product, then click "copy link" in the popup dialog box and you'll have a short link like this: https://a.co/d/bYyxGWD
 
Glad you caught it quick!! My HT oven is on a rolling cart and it's just in from the large garage door so I can move it away from everything. I have it insulated enough so I can rest my hand on top of the kiln (closest to the elements) at 1950 and not get burned. My other oven charred the thermocouple block and the wiring pieces since the bricks weren't proper K23 IFB, even thought Amazon said they were.

I have a fire blanket, and want to get a couple more and some bigger extinguishers for my garage shop!
 
Glad you were able to get it out! I'm always careful about my oven not being too close to the wall and I have it far from anything else flammable on a workbench.
That said, looking back to when I started out and 'tried' to build my own heat treat oven, I'm surprised I didn't burn down my shed. I didn't really know what I was doing and it was not the safest thing... :D
 
Taz, this is the oven that you helped me program the pid for..
It sure gets hot..
 
Oh man, I didn't even recognize the shop pics! What insulation is around the kiln?? You may want to wrap it in KaoWool and then do some aluminum flashing outside that, seems to help keep the heat in and not let it radiate as much!
 
He has kaowool around the kiln and what looks like a water heater jacket around that. If you look at the photo, you will see the plastic on the jacket melted, but the insulation does not even look burnt. Additionally, the inside of the wall is severely burnt, but the outside is not scorched. That would clearly indicate the heat came from the inside wall, not the kiln.
 
My shop is in the garage that is beneath my coachhouse. The build is only 3 years old but I notice that is the only area that doesn't have smoke detectors. I am going to get some that have wifi like the ones mentioned earlier in this thread.

My son is a firefighter and he tells me that things go up very fast once a flame starts. Can be fully engulfed room in under 10 minutes and then they are just trying to keep fire from spreading to other structures and the house and contents is a complete loss. You are right when you say that you got there just in time.

I'm no expert, but I would suggest looking further into the cause of the fire. My son has mentioned the flash point of wood changing from aging/being heated and also some odd electrical fires he has seen. Make sure the wire used in your 110v circuits isn't undersized etc.

Hang in there.
 
Im not 100% sure what happened.
I am going back and forth about the insulation meting off of the wires to the 110v outlet in that wall..
 
If you need any shop time or need to HT something and want to use my oven, let me know!
 
Thanks for the offer, I really appreciate it.
I may come look at your surface grinder attachment at some point .
 
I just want to ask again ... was anything plugged into the circuit that the wires went to? Turned on or off .... was there something plugged into the outside socket???
 
LCoop said:
As a electrician I've seen tons of examples in remodels, demos etc where mice have eaten the entire insulation off the wire. Just three bare wires in between a stud cavity. Never a fire but usually a dead mouse or two plus complaints of breakers tripping, especially with Arc fault breakers.

Years ago I happened to click on a You tube video where using a 9 volt battery and some steel wool you could start a fire. Yeap I already knew that. What came next was a guy standing in a burned out attached garage to his house that was partially destroyed by a fire and he said "I sure wish I had seen this video before."
He was being a safety conscious homeowner who replaced all the 9V batteries in his smoke detectors and thought he was doing the right thing. Problem was he threw them in a garbage bag with household garbage and placed it in his attached garage. Next thing he knew his neighbor was banging on his door yelling FIRE! Always put the plastic tab on used 9V batteries or wrap with electrical tape carefully before just tossing in the garbage.
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Yeah this is one of the reasons I usually wrap electrical tape around any 9 volt batteries either laying in a drawer or taken out and thrown away.

I started doing it after teaching a fire starting session at a survival camp and I reached into the bag I use when I teach and pulled out a battery and steel wool at the same time and inadvertently started the steel wool into combustion. A quick dance and burnt hand and I decided that 9 volts in particular are too easy to short out and have things happen with. A quick wrap of electrical tape is cheap insurance.
 
I needed a 9V batter for a meter in the shop. I got one out of the fridge in the house and dropped it in my pocket. I was doing a few things in the yard while heading for the shop and my pocket got HOT. The battery terminals must have shorted on my pocket knife and was heating up rapidly. It didn't take me long to pull it out.
 
Nothing was plugged into the outside outlet or that circuit.
When I opened the wall the insulation on the wires was charred off but only in this section of the wall.
The wire continued around the corner into the wall behind the oven with no damage.
 
My shop has been set up for 15 years. The only change was putting the kiln against the wall.
I have only used the kiln 3 times since placing it there.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
He has kaowool around the kiln and what looks like a water heater jacket around that. If you look at the photo, you will see the plastic on the jacket melted, but the insulation does not even look burnt. Additionally, the inside of the wall is severely burnt, but the outside is not scorched. That would clearly indicate the heat came from the inside wall, not the kiln.
Click to expand...

I haven't looked at the pictures, and am not saying anything about the actual cause of this fire.

However, you last statement is incorrect, (in an important way). Long term gradual exposure to elevated temperatures gradually drops the flash point of wood. That is why wood stove setbacks from walls are set so conservatively. You get situations where the stove is sitting six inches away from the wall gradually drying and eventually pyrolizing the timber in the wall, and eventually it makes charcoal and the flash temperature gets so low that it lights from the stove heat. There are lots of stove fires where the drywall and paint are intact and the fire started inside the wall where the wood had been turned to charcoal over time.

Setbacks from heat treat furnaces that are only a couple of hundred degrees at surface still need to be very conservative. Additional radiant barriers like those used for wood stoves are a good idea unless the furnace is >extremely< well insulated. I have seen this effect myself with a heat treat furnace I made myself before I built the current one (around 45 years ago).
 
Like I said earlier I fully agree about the flash point of wood changing. Most ceramic kilns I've witnessed take several hours to come up to full heat for ceramics or knife heat treat range. Now if the 2 x 4 inside the wall was dried out through the 15 or more years and three times being exposed to really high heat the flash point drops to a dangerous level. Just my opinion.

As far as the 9v battery just search You tube for 9v battery house fires. As dangerous as they are nothing is as dangerous as a lighted candle in a house. And I see that all the time when visiting or working in a house.
 
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