Worked in my shop a couple weeks ago on some hobby stuff. Had not been out there until this evening to use my compressor to air up a tire. Opened the door and found that sometime in the last couple weeks my shop had been on fire. Looks like it started on one wood work bench and burned up the wall. There is a wood shelf over the bench and it melted a new stereo and speakers onthe shelpf but did not ignite the wood shelf. Brned signs and posters on the wall and melted anything plastic in a about a 10 foot radius. Melted the covers off of all of the flourescent lights. The shop is covered from ceiling to floor in soot. There is a small amount of soot that came out the top of the overhead door opening but hardly any soot out the window around the a/c unit which is right next to the fire. I can't imagine how it started since it looks like it was in the middle of a pile of parts where I had not done anything for a couple months. Firemen said it had been out for a while since everything was cold and they thought the building was sealed tight enough that the fire burned up the oxygen and put itself out. Luckily my Chevell and 52 Belair were in my other garage but all my tools and equipment were in there as well as an OT car. Adjuster is supposed to come out tomorrow so I can find out how bad I am going to get hosed. Wish me luck.
What gets paid for depends entirely on what coverage you bought. FYI. Good luck with the repairs - sounds like it could have been much worse.
Your very lucky that you didn't stumble upon it while it was just about to burn it self out. Open the door, give the fire some oxygen and poof have a face full of flames from the back draft the rush of oxygen created. Glad to hear your OK.
You shouldnt get "hosed" at all. If you had a non-oped car that got destroyed it woulda been a different story ... non-op's usally dont have vehicle insurance so not covered there jand homeowners insurance doesnt cover your uninsured (non-op'ed ) vehicles. You should come out OK ... but these claims are always a PITA
wow, very lucky and very sad. no smoke alarms, or too far from house to hear if there was one working? set up camera system that you can check on things when not in shop?
This is exactly the type of situation he would have had. It isn't pretty either. Glad it burned itself out too, tells you you have it pretty well sealed up. Hope you get treated fairly by the insurance company.
Could have been a lot worse. Fire in my shop or home is my greatest fear. Had a plant I worked at burn down. I take lots of precautions to prevent it happening to me.
I think someone was watching out for you and you are very very lucky that it burned itself out before the entire building burned. Finding out what started the fire is very important so that maybe you can prevent this from happening again. I have many fire extinguishers in my shop just in case I need a few quick. Please post something when you find what caused the fire. Best of luck. Jimbo
Whew that was a bit close. Any word on the cause? Electrical, spontaneous or possibly a spark from what you were working on or with starting something smoldering?
Wow , how lucky you were it didnt burn to the ground. Maybe it was spontanious comustion from some shop rags or other items such as that. it sounds to me more like a smoldering type fire to me I always put oily or greasy rags and things in a air tight container, that way they wont ignite
I caught what could have been a bad situation,about 7 months ago we had a power outage what happned is half of the house was out I thought it was blown circuit breaker,but half the house it didn't sound right,I called a neighbor he had the same problem(hes an electrician)he said one of the legs of the transformer was out,well nothing we could do but wait for com ed to fix it. My daughter groom's dog's and she was going to cut the wifes dog and was going to run an extension cord out of the garage to the yard,she opened the side door and smoke was pouring out the door,she came in calling me I ran out there and in to the garage,I could'nt see because the power was out there was no flames but I heard a buzzing noise,I got the overhead door open and my wife grabbed the garden hose but we didn't need it ,my neighbor came over the motor on the air compressor was smoking and started throwing sparks,I tripped the circuit breaker and the buzzing stopped. what had happned was the air compressor was running on 110 and its 220 it burned the motor up it cost me $600.00 for a new motor,I tried to get com ed to pay for it they told me its due to the weather not their fault. from now on I shut the circuit breaker off,I should have done that long ago..
Good plan on having everything on a breaker. My welder, mill, compressor are all either unplugged when not in use or the breaker gets thrown when I'm done. Of course I go to use something and realize I haven't turned on the breaker.. a small price to pay for being safe. Bob
glad your safe,shit could have been worse.as long as you & your family are ok- material shit can be replaced,trust me on this one.{long sad story}
Glad it was no worse than what you described. I think that, were it mine, I'd look into some kind of remote fire alarm/detector system. I have often wondered about small commercial style sprinkler systems for home shops and garages. Wet stuff you can fix. Burnt-up stuff goes to the landfill.
Do you have a security system at the house? My garage is wired for an alarm (infared remote.. fuckin' magic...) and it includes smoke and fire. Bob
I noticed that Chelvell Bob caled the fire dept. even though the fire was out. Many people don't know that if you put out the fire yourself, and don't report the fire to the FD, your insurance company will not pay for the damage.
You wouldn't believe what i went through to get the fire dept out here. I live in the country, wife called fire dept and told them we thought it was out but not sure. they said call the sherrif and if needed he would call them out. Called the sherrif and he said call the fire department. Told him what they said so he called them then they came out. I did not know but figured the insureance would have to have some kind of report from them.
Most departments, like ours, can't respond unless were paged by the sheriffs dept. The reason being, is that our insurance for our trucks, gear and personnel does not activate until were paged. We could be listing to a 5 alarm fire one town over, and not be able to respond until we are paged to the scene. It sucks just as much for us, the people that want to help the most.
glad it didn't turn out for the worse... all these shop fires have me worried. my shop is a 100 year old carriage house... lots of old dry timber and drafty. i regularly weld in there, too. i keep two large type abc fire extinguishers in there, but that'd do nothing if i weren't there to catch it. i am also reasonably sure my homeowners would not cover a fire if it were due to a welding accident. hope it all works out for the best for ya... good luck!
Someone probably already posted this but you are lucky you didn't open the door while it was burning itself out. A back draft is an ugly thing. I am sorry to see you have a loss and damned happy to see that it is not any worse than it is. Absolutely correct, we had a house fire once and even though the fire dept showed up and did there thing there was no Fire Marshal's Report. In KC if a fire is not suspicious there is no Fire Marshal's Report. The insurance company didn't pay, they said no Fire Marshal's Report no fire.
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