Well it happened. Never seriously thought it would happen to me. While charging a 4s battery in the detached garage I went inside for not more than 15 minutes, came out the side door and immediately saw smoke coming from the garage, ran in and saw a foot high fire where I charge. I have a fire extinguisher mounted on the counter but was able to smother the open flames with a blanket. It totaled 2 lipos, charger, cable receiver, and my servo tester. I had an array of feelings all day yesterday after this happened, from how very fortunate I was to notice before the garage was fully involved, to how pissed off I was at myself for having this happen.
The 4s 2200 lipo I was charging initially tested no voltage, or err on the tester. I usually bump up the voltage on the charger (Ni) before placing it on lipo setting. For some reason I did not do this and was expecting to be in the garage working so was not too concerned. There was not much left of the lipos or charger to warrant a forensic cause, and while I do have a gfci on my 20a circuit, this particular outlet was added to the 15a light circuit, which still should have tripped the breaker but didnt.
I spent half of yesterday as well as today cleaning up the smoke stains and soot, the burning plastic causes a heavy soot filled smoke. While I will probably spend numerous hours/days cleaning all surfaces and planes due to the odor, I do feel extremely fortunate it was not worse. In life everyone has those moments where you reflect and day to yourself "what the hell was I thinking" the only thing to do is to learn from ones misadventures and mistakes and go on
Since we have this new social media provided kindly by MRC I want to go the next step and warn all of you to PLEASE take this advice: Never ever store Lipos inside your home or shop and most importantly never ever charge them inside. Set aside some space away from structures and flammables to store and charge the Lipos. Also make sure there is a fire extinguisher in your shop, as well as a gfci on your circuit and a smoke alarm. The $5 smoke alarm itself would have prevented 95% of the damage. I encourage you not to take this lightly especially for those with attached garages/shops.
CT
The 4s 2200 lipo I was charging initially tested no voltage, or err on the tester. I usually bump up the voltage on the charger (Ni) before placing it on lipo setting. For some reason I did not do this and was expecting to be in the garage working so was not too concerned. There was not much left of the lipos or charger to warrant a forensic cause, and while I do have a gfci on my 20a circuit, this particular outlet was added to the 15a light circuit, which still should have tripped the breaker but didnt.
I spent half of yesterday as well as today cleaning up the smoke stains and soot, the burning plastic causes a heavy soot filled smoke. While I will probably spend numerous hours/days cleaning all surfaces and planes due to the odor, I do feel extremely fortunate it was not worse. In life everyone has those moments where you reflect and day to yourself "what the hell was I thinking" the only thing to do is to learn from ones misadventures and mistakes and go on
Since we have this new social media provided kindly by MRC I want to go the next step and warn all of you to PLEASE take this advice: Never ever store Lipos inside your home or shop and most importantly never ever charge them inside. Set aside some space away from structures and flammables to store and charge the Lipos. Also make sure there is a fire extinguisher in your shop, as well as a gfci on your circuit and a smoke alarm. The $5 smoke alarm itself would have prevented 95% of the damage. I encourage you not to take this lightly especially for those with attached garages/shops.
CT
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