Author Topic: House almost caught fire!! (Read 235 times)

glocke · « **on:** March 23, 2010, 03:52:25 AM »

Last night around nine I was doing some things around the house and had several lights on, one of them in the hallway. Not even five minutes after turning this light on I smelled something burning, and walk down the hall to find smoke literally pouring from the fixture. I cut the power, and removed the fixture (parts of which were almost to hot to touch and found scorching on the drywall where the fixture was mounted, and charring on the fixture itself.

Im really not sure what happened. The fixture says to use 25 watt bulbs max. Two of the bulbs were the GE Naturals 40 watt bulbs, and one was a 25 watt standard bulb. Im guessing that having the 40 watt bulbs in there may have contributed to this, but they have been in there for the better part of a year.

It was pretty scary and led to somewhat of a sleepless night.

I consider myself to be a pretty cautious person (to the point of it being OCD), whenever I leave the house I make sure appliances are unplugged, stove is off, etc...but this happened in less than 5 minutes...If I had been outside or in the basement when this happened I have no doubts it would have escalated into something much more severe.

pics here.

http://gallery.me.com/glocke12/100260

adriaan · « **Reply #1 on:** March 23, 2010, 04:16:13 AM »

Scary ...

You had 105W worth of bulbs in a 75W fixture, backed with rockwool so the heat couldn't leak out.

Scary ...

The rockwool looks like it must have been touching heated up parts, so perhaps something had made the rockwool shift.

(Message edited by adriaan on March 23, 2010)

glocke · « **Reply #2 on:** March 23, 2010, 04:25:32 AM »

Scared the shit out of me. When I bought the bulbs I know I was shopping for 25 watt bulbs, Im usually pretty careful about that stuff. I must have picked up the 40 watters by accident.

One of the things I was in the process of doing last night also was changing the smoke detector batteries. I had removed them about an hour before this happened and than got distracted by something else so the smoke detector was out of commision while this was going on. First order of business for me (TODAY) is to put more smoke detectors in the house, and to get get a couple of fire extinguishers.

This just goes to show that shit can happen no matter how careful you are.

dluxe · « **Reply #3 on:** March 23, 2010, 05:58:21 AM »

That is scary! I'm glad you caught it and all is ok. My neighbor's house caught fire several years ago and the cause was his upstairs bathroom exhaust fan which shorted out. He was not home but I saw the smoke and called 911 and they managed to save the house although the upstairs was damaged and lots of smoke damage to the whole home.

12stringwilson · « **Reply #4 on:** March 23, 2010, 06:01:04 AM »

Thank goodness you and your home are safe. Now you have my OCDness kicking in. I am going to have to do a quick check of my fixtures when I get home.

artswork99 · « **Reply #5 on:** March 23, 2010, 06:05:29 AM »

Glad to hear that all are safe.

keith_h · « **Reply #6 on:** March 23, 2010, 06:17:10 AM »

It is good you and your home are ok. This reminds me that it is time to get the batteries changed in my smoke detectors and test my alarm system.

Keith

lbpesq · « **Reply #7 on:** March 23, 2010, 07:15:56 AM »

Close call, but, as they say, all's well that ends well. By goosing you to put up more detectors and obtain fire extinguishers, this little incident may have ultimately saved your life (and your Alembics!) Glad you and yours are unharmed.

Bill, tgo

cozmik_cowboy · « **Reply #8 on:** March 23, 2010, 07:37:35 AM »

I've been meaning to get extinguishers - now I will. And next time SWMBO says it's too dark, put in a bigger bulb, I'll show her this. Glad you caught it in time.

Peter

tbrannon · « **Reply #9 on:** March 23, 2010, 11:33:04 AM »

If you're going to buy new detectors, make sure you get units that also detect carbon monoxide.

lembic76450 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 23, 2010, 02:45:19 PM »

As Toby said, a big +1. As a gas service tech for the Gas Co. here in Rhode Island, CO is more frightening, you don't always see it coming. Good call Toby.
Glad you are safe, Greg.

slawie · « **Reply #11 on:** March 23, 2010, 02:50:41 PM »

Adriann is right.
Too many watts under a blanket of Rockwool!
This is a recipe for disaster.

Here in Australia the federal government introduced a scheme where people were funded for
ceiling insulation. Well the ratty and backyard boys
went out and were performing the insulation installation and so many inexperienced installers
did precisely as you see in your case. There have been numerous
house fires caused by the bad installation so much that the government is now
forced to re-check all the new installations of
ceiling insulation around the country. This amount to tens of thousands of home with the potential
to burn down.
The minister in charge of the program (Peter Garrett from Australian rock band Midnight Oil) was demoted.
Second to that foil insulation was used in some instances where the mounting staples pierced
electrical cables on the ceiling battons. This made the whole
roof LIVE 4 people lost there lives during the installation
process by touching the live insulation.
Major Stuff Up!

I recommend to everyone that has insulation or new downlights fitted to check
that there is clearance around the light fixture and never
place lamps over the rating of the fixture.
The single flouro lamps are a good idea also as they draw less electricity and do not
have the same heat output of incandescent bulbs.

All I can say is on this occasion the Gods were smiling on you.

slawie

edwin · « **Reply #12 on:** March 24, 2010, 12:39:00 AM »

Yikes! I'm glad I live in a country where the voltage out of the wall is only 120 volts.

Be careful out there, watch out for those electrons!

Bradley Young · « **Reply #13 on:** March 25, 2010, 09:51:48 AM »

It isn't the voltage that kills you; it's amperage.

slawie · « **Reply #14 on:** March 25, 2010, 03:25:04 PM »

There is a story about the Home insulation debacle here,

http://www.theage.com.au/national/insulationscheme-house-fires-rise-20100325-qzvv.html

The number was worse than I thought.

Taken from the above story; At a senate inquiry into the government's bungled home insulation program yesterday, department officials confirmed the number of fires associated with dodgy installation of pink batts had risen to 120.

slawie