Surprisingly, apart from the Captain, I was the biggest guy in the crowd so the threat to beat me up wasn't all that intimidating.

Plus they had airpack and their baffle gear on.

I would have had no problem outrunning them.

Plus no key in the fire access box means as soon as I shut the security door they can't touch me.

nyaah!

Heed John's good advice

Greetings,

I have smoke alarms in my house - the one near the kitchen goes off every time I make toast and don't turn on the fan, or when I open the oven door without turning on the fan - Mr. installed it too near the kitchen! That's the light side.

On the serious side, yes, I have smoke detectors and check/change the batteries fairly regularly. I think everyone should have them. Unfortunately for some people even buying batteries can stretch the budget. Let's see . . . milk for the children or batteries for the alarm. . .

Hope, peace, joy, love,
Beloved

Redhead gave me a stern talking to awhile back and now we have many smoke alarms and an extinguisher under the sink....the one in the hall by the kitchen goes off even if we think hot thoughts...

Beloved,

Hi,

You wrote:

I have smoke alarms in my house - the one near the kitchen goes off every time I make toast and don't turn on the fan, or when I open the oven door without turning on the fan - Mr. installed it too near the kitchen! That's the light side.

There are new smoke alarms that have a hush feature designed for that common occurance. One push of a button temporarily desensitzes the detector (approx 15 minutes--an efficient toaster can burn your toast in much less time than that)

Grace and peace to you.

John

abpenny,

Hi,

You wrote:

an extinguisher under the sink

Please have farmboy rectify that situation immediately.

The fire extinguisher should be mounted on a bracket next to a doorway at a height somewhere between 3' and 6' for ease of access. Read the instructions carefully and note how long the extinguisher will fire when the lever is depressed.

The extinguisher is not designed to put out a kitchen fire (most are too small for the job) it is to buy time for an exit of the premises.

Under the sink is not a helpful location for a fire extinguisher of any size.

All fire extinguishers should be checked annually, discharged and refilled and repressurized.

You can discharge the extinguisher yourself prior to it being checked so that you gain experience using one. A live fire is not required for the practice.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Oh. Read the directions you say? Mounted on a wall 3 to 6 feet high? Do I have to point out how ugly that's going to look? Send me a photo of yours....

I remember once asking for a small fire extinquisher under the pulpit. This church used real candles, lots of them. The choir had big hair and the candles were in back of them. I could see someone's hair going up in flame or a bride's veil. It was pooh poohed by the board. But not too long after someone donated a whole raft of candles with batteries. So someone was listening.

I don't need smoke alarms. My alarm system moniters for smoke and if it detects smoke automatically and phones the fire department. I am not sure HOW it does it but it goes off when I am cooking. (I phone the alarm company then so the firemen don't come to put out my cooking) It does not not take much to set it off. I experimented with a lighter and paper in every room.

I also do not need to change the battery. I have no worries about fire and my neighbours know when I am cooking and don't come over. :)

Children's Services requires me to have a fire extinguisher. It is four years old now and I have never used it. Would it work if I threw it in the fire?

John, great post.

Have you considered sending it to the local paper for an editorial/commenatary?

Through humour you share multiple items that most people don't think about, and by doing so, you could save lives.

Hi revjohn...I found a spot on a wall that I won't hate. We're in a 4 level split and there's a short wall outside of our upstairs bedroom...do you think that would be a sensible spot? (Exe, if you're around..I'm giving you a stern look about smokey bedroom remarks)

abpenny,

Hi,

You wrote:

Oh. Read the directions you say?

Potentially life saving equipment needs to be handled respectfully and responsibly. They don't let anyone who walks in off the street play with a defibrillator. I know, I've asked.

You wrote:

Mounted on a wall 3 to 6 feet high? Do I have to point out how ugly that's going to look? Send me a photo of yours....

I will take some pictures and post them.

I will also take pictures of recent homes destroyed by fire.

That will allow you to compare the aesthetics fairly.

It is nice to have a pretty home. I know of none who think charred, smoking, husks as attractive.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Serena,

You wrote:

I don't need smoke alarms. My alarm system moniters for smoke and if it detects smoke automatically and phones the fire department.

That would be a smoke detection and alarm. You are arguing against needing additional.

I assume that your alarm system is hardwired into your home do you know if it is drawing power to operate from a source located outside your home?

I only mention this because many household fires are electrical. If the electrics catch fire then the power to a hardwired system may be cut. That would send an interrupt signal to the alarm monitoring site. It would tell you nothing. You have about 1.5 minutes before the smoke becomes to dense for you to escape your home. Flashpoint is anywhere between 5 and 7 minutes away. No living thing will survive flashpoint. That is when the air is so superheated it sears your lungs. You may not die instantly. It will be painful.

My advice is for you to call your local firemarshall and ask them to send someone out to give you some advice. They can take a look at your system, determine how effective it is at monitoring for smoke and how big a risk you are taking with the lives of yourself and your loved ones.

They typically do it for free.

You wrote:

Children's Services requires me to have a fire extinguisher. It is four years old now and I have never used it. Would it work if I threw it in the fire?

No. The dry chemicals in the cylinder are likely fusing into a solid mass that will not leave the cylinder when the lever is squeezed. Throwing the extinguisher into the fire would have the same result of throwing a can of spray paint in the fire. The fire would superheat the airspace inside the tube until the pressure caused it to explode. The dry chemical would be overwhelmed and barely make a dent in the fire.

On the plus side you'd have been overcome by the smoke and heat and long dead before the possibility of any shrapnel from the exploding cylinder could cause you any harm.

Most commercially available fire extinguishers have a total use time of 8 to 12 seconds. The huge ones that the fire department use have a discharge time of 25 to 30 seconds. Throwing an extinguisher at a fire like it was a hand grenade is fool hardy.

Grace and peace to you.

John

abpenny,

Hi,

You asked:

Hi revjohn...I found a spot on a wall that I won't hate. We're in a 4 level split and there's a short wall outside of our upstairs bedroom...do you think that would be a sensible spot?

Absolutely not.

For starters, if it is more than three steps from the stove going for it means that you aren't in the kitchen when the whole thing is up in flames and by the time you got back a small extinguisher would be no help to you.

Ours is mounted on the kitchen wall one side step away from where I do the cooking. At no time in reaching for it will my back ever be pointed away from two of the three exits from the room.

If I cannot stop it everyone is already out of the house or on their way out and I can leave without having to rush past the flames.

It is most sensible to have the extinguisher where it has the ability to do the most good. The kitchen, since we are likely cooking in there when the fire starts is the most sensible place to have the extinguisher because the quicker the response the better the odds of actually extinguishing the blaze.

I have extinguished two kitchen fires in my lifetime by smothering the flames either with a pot-lid or judicious use of baking soda. Apart from some soot there was no damage.

I was to blame the first time, the oil I was using over heated in the pot and ignited. I put the lid on an smothered the flames.

If this happens to you do not under any circumstances attempt to carry the flaming pot out of the house. That can have catastrophic results. Put the lid on the pot and slide it to another element on the stove.

The second fire was some kitchen noobs who only used the top rack of the broiler pan when they were making chicken. This allowed the fat to drip onto the floor of the oven and ignite. I put that out with a handful of baking soda. The chicken was quite ruined.

The real danger with your proposed solution would be in the middle of the night when your smoke alarm sounds. Knowing the extinguisher is near by and rushing to it could end up being the death of you.

A properly mounted extinguisher is in the smoke zone, one whiff and you could pass out, you will certainly have stinging eyes and a debillitating cough. Not to mention that by rushing out the door of the bedroom to get it you may have grabbed a super heated doorknob and seriously burnt your hand. The difference in air pressure between the hall where the fire may be and your room where the fire is not will actually fling the door into your face.

Grace and peace to you.

John

O.K. revjohn...I was laughing pretty hard at your defibrillator comment, but then I had a mental cinema of EMT's looking tired and sweaty and you wading in and saying "lemme give you a hand, boys"....so I'm not entirely sure it was a joke.

There is one teeny spot by the fridge...2 sidesteps from the stove and my back to the front door. If that works I'll do it, even though it's going to be some butt ugly.

They should make home fire extinguishers to match your decor, then more people would put them up.

abpenny,

Hi,

You wrote:

O.K. revjohn...I was laughing pretty hard at your defibrillator comment, but then I had a mental cinema of EMT's looking tired and sweaty and you wading in and saying "lemme give you a hand, boys"....so I'm not entirely sure it was a joke.

It was mental cinema. I was hoping it would tie into earlier posts where I suggested power-tools as appropriated gifts for women. The defibrillator is, in many contexts, the ultimate power tool. Impact hammers can stop a heart, they don't work very well at starting them again.

You wrote:

There is one teeny spot by the fridge...2 sidesteps from the stove and my back to the front door. If that works I'll do it, even though it's going to be some butt ugly.

It is all a matter of perspective.

I'll take butt-ugly over fire-gutted any day of the week. So long as you can easily access the extinguisher without having to fiddle in a confined space it is a perfect place..

If your extinguisher is over a year old I'd get it checked and refilled. As noted above the dry chem powder can clump and solidify making the extinguisher useless. About once a month I gently turn mine completely over so that no clumps are forming.

I expect that I am going to need to get additional extinguishers because when the kids see what fun I have discharging this one at the end of the year they are going to want to have the same experience.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Somegirl,

You wrote:

They should make home fire extinguishers to match your decor, then more people would put them up.

They are meant to stand out like sore thumbs so that they are noticed by people who are panicking or by others who are in a hurry to find them.

If they blended in then a quick scan of the room would never notice them. If they cannot be noticed in a hurry they might as well not be there.

They do, however come in a limited range of colours. White, Orange, and Red. Knowing that ahead of time allows one to make the decoration adjustments as necessary.

Grace and peace to you.

John

In university, i lived in a house with a bunch of girls.

I came home one day to firetrucks, and lots of firemen, etc.

Turned out someone had the great idea of making french fries.
umm....this craving for food was a direct result of smoking ie munchies & alcohol consumption. After putting the pan of grease on the stove, they went into the dining room, right beside the kitchen to continue to play cards....of course..the smoking mde their judgement of time a bit off.

when the grease was in flames, they noticed, and proceeded to try to carry it outside, down the carpetted hallway, out the front door, off the wood porch, onto the front lawn.

I must admit to being rather ticked when i walked in...and thankful that no one was hurt, other than a couple of minor grease splash burns.

LESSON-- teach your children well about the dangers of grease ..and inattention to cooking.

Rev John wrote very maturely Plus no key in the fire access box means as soon as I shut the security door they can't touch me.

nyaah!

But they had axes!

As the partner of a volunteer firefighter I can testify to Rev John's words, especially about firefighter humour which is often all wet (pun intended).

Lucky me I have two, not one but two!, hardwired fire alarms. The second one was a result of the insurance company demanding we install a monitored security system (two dogs and living where no one could find us is apparently not enought these days). Fortunately the monitored one does not go off everytime I overheat the olive oil, which the other does and that one speaks, in two languages!

LB
Fume! Fume! Sacrebleu!

RevJohn said I assume that your alarm system is hardwired into your home do you know if it is drawing power to operate from a source located outside your home?

No. I do not know.

If the electrics catch fire then the power to a hardwired system may be cut. That would send an interrupt signal to the alarm monitoring site.

If the power goes off a trouble light comes on and a weird loud beeping starts until I punch in the code. I barely have time to do this before the alarm company phones wanting to send, police, ambulance, and firetrucks. The alarm and fire dectection system works for 48 hours without power. This is because burglers were cutting power before they broke in for awhile.

Throwing an extinguisher at a fire like it was a hand grenade is fool hardy.

Well, it was a thought. I have no idea where it is anyways. I have never seen a fire extinguisher mounted in a house anywhere. I did not know you could put one in the house until I had the home inspection for foster care. I will have to read my home inspection checklist again. I think according to that the fire extiguisher is supposed to be under the sink.

I generally fill a pot with water and throw it on the fire. Once when the ashes ignited in the plastice pail where I put them from the fireplace I grabbed the pail and ran out the front door and threw it in the snow. Then I covered it with snow. Then I went back inside and the rug was on fire so I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the tea kettle which was full of water and dumped it on the fire.
You can stil see the burn marks in the rug. I am quite adept at containing my own fires. I don't even stop to answer the phone.

I also did what you said not to further upthread. I took a flaming frying pan and ran it out the door. Burned my arm pretty bad but it I did not get it out of there my house would have burned down. I have actually done this more than once. So what else could I do?

My advice is for you to call your local firemarshall and ask them to send someone out to give you some advice.

We don't have real firemen here the town is too small. From what I can see all the firemen do here is have parties at the firehall. I have gone to several of their barbecuse. They are good cooks.

lbmuskoka,

Hi,

You wrote:

But they had axes!

They aren't allowed to use them to get through doors if there is no emergency.

My immaturity does not constitute and emergency.

Now matter how irritating.

Grace and peace to you.

John