quads said:
I think about the wiring in the walls
It sat there dormant for 13 years...
About five years ago, I was going down to the basement to fill the stove. As I was getting ready to go back upstairs, the lights started to flash on and off amid a great racket of thumps and shakes of the entire house. Then suddenly, it stopped. After my heart began to beat again, I noticed that one of my boys must have used the basement bathroom and left the light on. I reached in to shut it off, but flipping the switch had no effect. That's when I noticed a 12" plume of flame shooting out of the open ceiling. That was the light I thought saw.
I stood there like an idiot just staring, trying to take it in. My wife started yelling, asking what was wrong. I yelled back, asking for her to come down. She came down and looked in the bathroom. I knew it was electrical in origin. I had heard the same types of sounds when the HVAC guys working on the refrigeration compressors would throw the huge switches back on in the supermarket I worked in as a kid. But I couldn't figure out what could have caused it. My wife said, "Don't just stand there, put it out." "With what?", I asked. "With the g**damn fire extinguisher."
Weird... I had forgotten I even had one in all the confusion.
So I gave it a quick blast and the fire went out. I checked the breaker box, and sure enough, a breaker had been tripped. I decided I would check it out several times over the rest of the evening and get in there with a light before I went to bed. But then I did the right thing and called the fire dept.
About 20 guys were there in minutes. They went over and over everything and found nothing burning, but there was a pungent smell in the room. We all thought it was the face cord of semi-seasoned red oak I had stacked against the wall. Then one of them grabbed me and said, "Quick... where's your propane tanks?" I led him around to the back of the house and he closed the valve immediately.
Right after the fire extinguisher was discharged, I went over to the overhead air filtration unit in the shop to filter out the powder that had filled the air. I guess it was so loud that I never noticed the hissing sound..... the sound of propane leaking right into the same room that the wood stove was in.
Apparently, when I switched from an electric to a propane range, the installer had drilled directly through the sill and into an electric wire that was running along the floor joist. For 13 years it sat there in close proximity to the copper tubing that ran from the outside tank up to the kitchen range. Something, a mouse perhaps, or just settling of the house over the years caused these two items to finally contact each other. The arc blew a hole in the copper tubing, and ignited the propane before blowing the circuit breaker. When I put the fire out, the propane kept leaking into the room, unheard by me because of the sound of the filter fan. If I had just gone upstairs and not called the FD, the basement would have continued to fill with propane fumes until they got concentrated enough to get ignited by the burning stove... and I wouldn't be here writing this post. And had I gotten around to finishing the basement bathroom ceiling, I would never have noticed the plume of flame and we would have burned in our sleep.... and I wouldn't be here writing this post.
Three things to remember:
1.
Always call the FD if you have any kind of fire.
2. Sometimes, it's not paranoia. Things are really trying to kill you.
3. Laziness can sometimes be a virtue in disguise.
Of course I am kidding.
