My neighbors house is on fire!

[KenJax Tree]

"As long as there are no injuries"... so why DO people get injured or killed in house fires? Seems to me there must be plenty of time to get out of a burning house, right?

Plenty of time? You have about 30 seconds from the time you hear your smoke detector to get out before you can be overcome by smoke, the smoke kills you before the flame ever gets to you.

Nevermind i see you were a FF so you know already.

 

[Jules083]

Plenty of time? You have about 30 seconds from the time you hear your smoke detector to get out before you can be overcome by smoke, the smoke kills you before the flame ever gets to you.

Nevermind i see you were a FF so you know already.

I had a smoke alarm go off a few years ago, It's unreal just how smokey a house gets before the alarms start going off. I wouldn't have been able to stay in there very long.

Ran downstairs, choked the fire down, and ran outside leaving the doors open to air the house out. Middle of the night and snowing like crazy, it sucked. Everything inside smelled for a month.

Mine was from the wind outside blowing the smoke down the chimney and out the cleanout door. Something about the way the chimney is, the roof pitch, or the terrain makes for some interesting wind patterns.

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[chaikwa]

Plenty of time? You have about 30 seconds from the time you hear your smoke detector to get out before you can be overcome by smoke, the smoke kills you before the flame ever gets to you.

Nevermind i see you were a FF so you know already.

Dang it man, you're spoiling all my fun! I was all set to point out that Madonna Badger from Stamford CT thought sprinklers and smoke alarms weren't anything urgently needed too.

 

[mellow]

Heck, the FIL's house down in Florida just burned down due to.... Rats, apparently they were demoing a bunch of old warehouses around the corner and the rats needed a new place to stay, since the house was vacant at the time the rats called it home and started eating on the power lines and caused a fire. Fire dept's last 18 of 24 calls were due to rats starting fires in the area houses!

 

[Dalmatian90]

I had a smoke alarm go off a few years ago, It's unreal just how smokey a house gets before the alarms start going off. I wouldn't have been able to stay in there very long.

There's two common types of smoke detectors.

Ionization type detectors are by far the most common, they're the ones marked radioactive inside when you go to change the battery. They detect "hot" (open flame) fires faster...you might not see or just be barely able to see the smoke from a hot fire at the point they trip, but you could have a lot of smoke from a smoldering fire before they trip.

Photoelectric detectors are superior detecting "cold" (smoldering) fires because they'll trip as soon as the electric eye is broken by smoke...but they don't detect "hot" fires as quickly, because the hot fires are burning much more cleanly.

In your situation, lots of smoke from a woodstove before the detector went off, that's classic ionization type detector behavior.

Both types of smoke detectors, plus CO detectors, provide a pretty good warning system. Because CO is a product of incomplete combustion, there's certain situations they'll detect a fire-about-to-happen before it's at stage the smoke detectors will alert.

 

[shawnw]

I had a smoke alarm go off a few years ago, It's unreal just how smokey a house gets before the alarms start going off. I wouldn't have been able to stay in there very long.

Ran downstairs, choked the fire down, and ran outside leaving the doors open to air the house out. Middle of the night and snowing like crazy, it sucked. Everything inside smelled for a month.

Mine was from the wind outside blowing the smoke down the chimney and out the cleanout door. Something about the way the chimney is, the roof pitch, or the terrain makes for some interesting wind patterns.

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I like wood heat, but I'd seriously start reconsidering its use in my home if I were you. My butt would be so puckered it could squeeze two nickels into a dime.

 

[Encore]

We've been very fortunate around here. Every year I swore my neighbor was going to have a chimney fire. They had two open fireplaces and would burn wet wood in there all the time. Sometimes even trash.


I remember one time when all the power was out for a few days I got up real early to start the generator before I headed in to work so my wife could take a shower, and I see sparks shooting out their chimney cap. I freaked out and ran over there with a flashlight thinking their chimney was just about on fire.

Turned out he was using some garbage to get his fire going. Unbelieveable. I could not convince him to stop doing it so the following year I cut down the trees between our houses (just a few were there anyways). Now there is about 150' of uninhibited space between the two houses so if theirs goes up in flames mine does not.

House fires are no joke. We have several in the county every year that burn to the ground and while you may get a new house built there is more times than not things lost that cannot be replaced.

 

[Jules083]

I like wood heat, but I'd seriously start reconsidering its use in my home if I were you. My butt would be so puckered it could squeeze two nickels into a dime.

It's not common to get that bad, and I've since learned when to not have a big fire. That was a one time deal. I've had smaller blow backs 3 or 4 times, but only a few puffs.


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[rmount]

Mine was from the wind outside blowing the smoke down the chimney and out the cleanout door. Something about the way the chimney is, the roof pitch, or the terrain makes for some interesting wind patterns.

I have no experience with them, but have you tried one of those weather-vane type chimney caps which always keep the opening downwind?

 

[shawnw]

It's not common to get that bad, and I've since learned when to not have a big fire. That was a one time deal. I've had smaller blow backs 3 or 4 times, but only a few puffs.


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Just be safe friend!

 

[Marc]

Sprinklers are primarily a life safety system.

Half of all people killed in fires start off impaired in their ability to escape -- they're handicapped, or they're children, or elderly.

Of the able-bodied adults who are killed a large number (probably most) of them are temporarily impaired -- i.e. drunk or high.

Once you're down to sober adults who are killed, I don't know the statistic but I have an educated guess a sizeable percentage are parents who escaped and then are killed trying to rescue their still trapped kids -- especially when they're killed at single family residences in suburban/rural areas.

But hey, as long as you have perfect ESP to know when the fire will happen or Scotty standing by to beam your family out, feel free to think they're meant to save replaceable property.

I'll amend that to say residential sprinklers are designed primarily for life safety by attempting to prevent the room of origin from flashing over.

Commercial sprinklers were/are designed for property protection and was their initial purpose when Henry Parmelee came up with his way back when to protect his piano factory.

Funny thing, though, as it turns out, sprinklers designed to protect property also do a pretty good job at protecting lives as well. Odd how fire is a threat to both like that.

Functional sprinkler systems are also pretty good at saving fire service members lives' as well.

 

[chaikwa]

There's two common types of smoke detectors...

You are 100% correct in your description! Wanna get REALLY technical? Did you know there's a difference between smoke DETECTORS and smoke ALARMS? Detectors are a part of a system. They detect the prescence of smoke and send a signal to a control panel which in turn triggers an attenuator, and/or an audible alarm. Smoke alarms are a self-contained unit, sometimes connected to a system and/or other alarms that each sound an alarm when they detect the prescence of smoke. I didn't know any of this until last month when I had a meeting with a UL Labs guy that heads up a committee here in Michigan that is trying to establish a program to get alarms in every private residential structure in the state. Proabably useless info to most but interesting to me at least!

 

[Marc]

You are 100% correct in your description! Wanna get REALLY technical? Did you know there's a difference between smoke DETECTORS and smoke ALARMS? Detectors are a part of a system. They detect the prescence of smoke and send a signal to a control panel which in turn triggers an attenuator, and/or an audible alarm. Smoke alarms are a self-contained unit, sometimes connected to a system and/or other alarms that each sound an alarm when they detect the prescence of smoke. I didn't know any of this until last month when I had a meeting with a UL Labs guy that heads up a committee here in Michigan that is trying to establish a program to get alarms in every private residential structure in the state. Proabably useless info to most but interesting to me at least!

Residential units both detect and notify with an audible alarm. The line is being blurred between residential smoke alarms and commerical units that are component of an integrated system; now there are networked residential units, wi-fi and internet addressable units will and probably already do have connectivity with residential panels. Personally I think the technology (and terminology) is lagging there, but in the world of third party certification and prescriptive codes, adoption of new technology can be slow.