LiIon fire survivor

General Discussion
1

This week happened, what I was sure never could happen with me… After a long workday and some modifications on my board I just wanted to go for a test ride. I plugged in the XT90 Antispark to get my system running, but… Fu** I plugged the Loopkey into the charging port… 3sec and no way back…90sec and the work of the last 6month gone… There are two things which saved our flat

  1. and most important, thanks to @Eboosted that he shared his experience with his first and hopefully only fire. Because of this I bought some fire covers, fire extinguisher and had a 5l bottle of salt water close to my workplace.
  2. the bullet prove deck from @trampa … as the board was laying up side down the fire couldn´t burn through the board, and saved most of our wooden floor

I got the fire fast under control as I threw the two covers over and put out the last flames with the water and the extinguisher. Till the fire brigade arrived I already managed all.

Why I share this? For me it is a big pain in the a**…still can´t believe how I could be so stupid… I was reading before a lot about all the safety against fire topics here and I see people saying “no problem, I´ll just throw the board out of the window…” Sorry, but NO, you will not. If it start to burn you will probably run or shit in your pans rather than to take the board in your hands hand threw it away…

I live in a big house, second floor…don´t want to imagine what would happen if the floor would start to burn. Man it´s a fucking shit load of energy we put on or under our boards. Just want to say you all: Take care, always 110% focus on what you do. Be prepared, always have a fire extinguisher, bottle of salt water (5L or more), bag of sand or some of these

close to your workplace. Or even BETTER, ALL of it.

Take responsibility and find a safe workspace. Not only for you, also for your family and neighbors. Best to find a garage, container or workshop, where you just can let things burn (that´s what I´ll do for sure).

Believe me, it´s no fun to clean the flat after a LiIon or LiPo fire… You can´t imagine how much shit is in this batteries, and where all the dust will lay down.

Thank you to all who read till here and take my words to the heart! Stay tuned, ride safe!

And here some last memories…before and after: ful Back battery after

and that´s what left…I guess the motors also finished… left

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Oh my Lawd. Sorry this happened man. Truly heartbreaking.

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This is one more reason to use a BMS.

I’ve never seen a BMS charging system using an XT90 for charging, it’s usually a 5.5 x 2.1mm barrel connector, plus there is a safety shutdown on the charge circuit

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oh man I feel for you, that is such a sweet build too!

I am glad you are okay and managed to limit the damage

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Ouch. Good work being prepared though. I am about to buy blankets and an extinguisher, lessons learned from this post.

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I am sorry for your loss. It is a good thing you were prepared. Allow me to remind you that charge and discharge must never have the same connector. Loop or not is dangerous.

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This lesson I´ll for sure never forget…:sweat_smile::neutral_face:

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Damn, that sucks guys, just use a fuse in front of your charging port… parts which cost a few cents and are easily preventing that sort of sh.t

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first built thou…ordered 11S BMS from bestech…got lost in transit…decided to go without instead of waiting another 6weeks to get replacement. looks like it was a bad decision.

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Hope you ll get back on the road soon… feel sorry for your loss…

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I am so sorry for your loss. I hope you will recover fast

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thx. hope so too, but need to change the work place. don´t want to have this things close to the people I love. I can handle the lose of the board, I can clean the flat, I can live with the smell of burned batteries, but I never ever could live with the thoughts that I responsible for burning down the flats of other people. I´m very lucky how everything went, but that’s not always like this. It even don´t need to be your fault. there are tons of reasons why batteries can start to fire.

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after all cleaning is done i´ll take a rest and than hopefully start from the scratch again. one by one. I learned a lot. I have many things to improve :wink:

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Happy for you keeping up … We should really prevent these sorts of fires… if someone ist interested in it i`d do a list of things you need to think about when building or using li-xx batterys for save battery handling. As i have seen that at least half of the fires in the forums could ve been easily prevented.

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I would like to see this list Never can have enough information already thought so before the fire.

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RIP electric longboard.:disappointed_relieved:

It’s good that it was not worse.

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Im going to do that… just searching through a few battery threads and searching for common mistakes (also on other forums ) that i can find but also going to do a checklist where you can check what you have done.

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18

Always use different plugs for loop and charging (male and female), always drop the fuse behind the charge port. E.g. Little fuse BF1 50-80A, depending on max drain. Even when using a BMS, the Fuse is imperative. A BMS can also go wonky and cause a short.

Frank

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Holly sh!t man! That’s was a close call. I’m. Glad you manage to save the house yourself. Once fire starts is very difficult to get it under control, I’m really happy my experience saved prople around the world.

Hope you don’t mind answering these questions, might help others in the future:

How long it took before the fire starts between the moment you plugged the wrong port and the first flame of fire?

How long did you take to pour the fire extinguisher into the flames?

Did you use the salt water before or after the fire extinguisher? Did it help?

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That must have been a crazy experience. I’m impressed you kept calm and took out the fire. I would probably have throw it out the window but now im doubting. Thanks for some fire instructions.

I’m glad you’re good and hopefully your next board is going to be even cooler and safer after this experience. Good luck in the future and I’m looking forward to see your next build :slight_smile:

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