I've been asked to have a simulated electrical fire for our Fire Department's open house on October 14. Any ideas on how I should go about this?

Let a plumber do some wiring. Or call 1-800-HANDYMAN. That should do it.

Run a large window Air conditioner off of a zipcord extension cord that has been run under a rug in a hallway.


Oh ..... SIMULATED!!!

Have the Vo-tech kids build you an insulated house wall complete with wiring and then run a 100 Amps thru some 14-2 NMB. Hinge the drywall and let the public see the heat damage.

FPE springs to mind.......

One type of fire that can be prevented, is closet fires, build a small closet with double 1/2 rock interior, install a pull chain with 100W A lamp, you will be able to demo, a closet fire every half hour, fill the closet with cardboard boxes and rags, right up to the light bulb.

And don't forget to do the demo, out in the open lot!

What is the most common type of electrical fire? Or even a top 5 or 10 most common and let’s pick from that. Do you want to simulate a frayed cord spark on to drapes? Loose connection on a receptacle burning the insulation back? Or for the more dramatic, drop a wrench across the line side of the main service and let the molten metal spray onto the gas can for the lawn mower?

When my mom used to clean houses she walked in on a fire where the metal coverplate to the dryer recpt. came loose and dropped across the 220 on the plug. I don't know if the breaker popped (I assume it did) but the subsequent sparks had the laundry room on fire when she showed up and let herself in to clean. Lucky for the homeowner and the dog the way it timed out.

How about some sparks on to a pile of lint?

If you want to show what happens to house wire when it has a severe overload, get the bigger Weller soldering gun. Change the copper soldering tip with a loop of romex wire (about 4 inches long) and pull its trigger switch. The soldering gun has inside a transformer that converts the 120VAC to some very low AC voltage but at high amperage that normally is passed thru the soldering tip. Something like 500 amps. (I measured the voltage across the tip terminals, 300mV, and the wattage consumed, 200W, and if the transformer is perfectly efficient, that's 666 amps. I said 500 amps guessing some losses in the wattage delivered by the transformer to the tip).

The house wire insulation would start to melt and smoke and burn. Why you shouldn't use pennies in the fusebox...

[This message has been edited by wa2ise (edited 09-15-2006).]

A list of common house fires : http://www.hanford.gov/fire/safety/hm_firefacts.htm

Closet fires, are right up there, and poor electrical installation of closet lighting, is an electrical created hazzard.

Another one is misuse of power strips, i was looking at the recent fire logs, and these popped up, they are more common, then wiring within building fires, or equipment fires.

I was thinking you could put 4 14-2 cables thru a few joist for more than 24" in a 1" hole and then not derate them. Run them all to mostly unused receptacle outlet circuits in bedrooms and so forth. From all the stuff I read lately this will instantly burst into flames, energized or not.

If I had to do this my first thought (other than should I) would be to use a welder as a power supply.

A welders output could easily be used to overload 15 amp branch circuit wiring.

They operate at a relatively safe voltage and the current can be controlled.

Not that I ever tortured some wiring components with a welder.

Bob



[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 09-16-2006).]

Many years ago the fire Dept. had a house set for demolition and asked us to set electrical fires.
Used multiple two wire extension cords with cracked insulation and heat lamps for a load. No Fire.
Tied the blade of a window fan and energized it. No fire.
Tried the movie trick of a light bulb with gasoline in it. It lit until the filement failed. No fire.
Put a light bulb next to some paper and before I finished telling the fire chief that it would probably take a while the paper and the wall were fully enveloped.

Alan--
The biggest problem is having a safe / controlable power source with enough power to get things started.

Get a bunch of 'recycled' household appliances. (Computers, perifiral power supplies, alarm clocks, low voltage lights, electric blankets, toasters, coffee makers, etc.) Load them at varying degrees on a few 14/3 circuits on a panel, then cut the neutral out of the panel.

Or, set-up a short circuit on a long run through the house with no OCP, or a known faulty OCP.

We used to do a simulation for the HS kids. 2 gang plastic box. Drill a hole in each side (L & R) & put a screw thru each hole with a nut on the inside. Connect 120 hot to one side and 120 neut to the other. Stuff the box loosly with steel wool then tissue. The steel wool will spark/burn and set the tissue on fire. Sometimes it takes a few minutes so we'd set it off to the side to see if anybody noticed the smoke before it went up in flames.
A word to the wise (which I wasn't the first time) ... don't put it under the smoke detector. Principal sure was mad.

Here is a gross overload event I remembered from High School. We had wired up some stage scenery with 70 40W bulbs using 18 AWG zip cord, and the plug was at the end of the string. The first time we powered it up, the insulation melted right off the plug wires.

Plug in some space heaters to a cheesy zip cord extension cord and see what happens.

If you can borrow an IR thermometer, plug in a heavy load to a worn receptacle and measure how hot the plug gets.

Steve that sounds like a safety hazard for a school setting. Then again so would mine. (In a school setting)

I like the idea of the soldering gun, and the romex, w/ a good spiel and lots of pictures, could be a good demonstration.

Lint build-up in a desktop computer.

Table lamp turned over, still on and resting against curtains.

Actually, neither of these are electrical fires, but if the electrical power were off, the fire would not have started.