Years ago, I used to have a friend who was a somewhat well-known character in computing circles. One day, in his home that he had wired and re-wired many times to accommodate his expanding home-technology fetish, a couple wires started smoking and started a small fire within the wall of the house. My friend punched a small hole in the wall, ran a garden hose in, and put out the fire. I asked why he didnt simply call the fire department. He replied that if the fire department arrived they would have torn apart the entire wall, despite his protests, and basically destroyed the place to get to the fire. He figured his small hole in the wall would give him enough access and patch up pretty easily.
New York has quite the diamond/jewelry district. When a burglar alarm goes off, the cops respond but aren’t permitted entry to the store (by previous agreement). The reason is because if a handful of cops run into an unattended jewelry store in the middle of the night looking for someone, the odds are fairly high their pockets will be bulging on the way out.
So, what do these two stories have in common? In both cases, someone determined that the value provided by having ‘official’ response to an emergency was not worth the suspected risk.
I was thinking about that as the plumber was installing a new shutoff valve in my house today. I was thinking about having a line run off the house water line to a small hose bib tucked under the stairs or under the kitchen sink. Purpose? Indoor firefighting. I keep a goodly supply of fairly substantial fire extinguishers around…but if my kerosene heater ignites something in a major way, a flat hose coiled under the sink might come in handy. I’m certainly in no hurry to have civil authorities in my house for any reason. Last thing I want is the fire department responding to a grease fire that got away from me and them passing a note to the feds about an unusually large amount of ammo in some guys basement.
Not sure of the merits, though. I mean, it sounds like a good idea on its face. A compact coil of hose in an out-of-the-way spot ready to go at a moments notice. But I suppose I could get the same effect if I just ran into the yard and threaded the garden hose through the window. Not sure. Whaddya think? Brilliant? Good Idea? Meh? Stupid? Idiotic?
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This, actually, is something I’ve considered in previous houses. In this one, there’s a full-pressure cold water connection to the tankless gas water heater, which is on the garage wall adjacent to the house entry door (tankless water heaters have “auxiliary” full-pressure connections on both cold in and hot out – or should have them – because every 18 months they need to have 50/50 vinegar and water pumped through them for scale removal, sooner for hard water, less often for soft water).
Haven’t done it yet, but a couple of 50 ft “accordion” style collapsible hoses hanging on the wall below the heater would allow reaching everywhere inside the house.
The fire fighting hose thing is nothing more than a manual version of an integral residential fire sprinkler system.
If I ever get the chance to build the house I want, it will have an integral fire sprinkler system; if 100-200 gallons can be applied to exactly where the fire started as soon as it starts, not only is that remarkably effective in extinguishing the fire, it limits fire and water damage to a small area.
For houses with wells, 2-3 large pressure tanks and generator backup for the pump handle the initial sprinkler demand water supply, for community water supply systems, it’s not a bad idea to install a volume-limiting valve in the sprinkler system to shut it down after 500 gallons or so; if the fire’s not out by then, it’s bigger than residential sprinklers can handle, and if it is out >500 gallons is just causing more flood damage. Whether one wishes to add a connection between the sprinkler system and the house alarm system to summon the local FD when the sprinkler system activates is a judgement call; your friend is right, the FD will destroy more than they save.
Putting a hose under the sink with an adapter to hook directly to your faucet would probably be financially more responsible, might add a few more seconds to the process, but if it saves a couple hundred bucks…….
Aside re setting the house on fire yet again: I found that a spray bottle works well for putting out the many little carpet fires that occur when yer wood stove sorta explodes and spews burning coals over a surprisingly large area. Also, you don’t HAVE to have eyebrows.
Buy some 2A water filled extinguishers (pressurized) and place in closets around the house. If 2 1/2 gallons of sprayed water won’t put out the fire you are in big trouble any way you look at it. Pair each water extinguisher with a 2A10BC Dry Chemical extinguisher and you are set for most fires.
Dry chemical extinguishers make a horrible mess that is almost impossible to clean up. CO2 or nitrogen(my choice,cool and suffocate fire) do as good a job without the clean up,be careful about the water extinguishers-untrained personel can try to use them on grease/flammable liquid fires causing them to spread or electrical and shock themselves or others.
A “utility tap” at the water heater/main will pass any inspection without notice(with full pressure/volume)unlike a seperate tap under the sink.
Good idea,I know several firemen and they have a different viewpoint on property damage vs fire supression. I am still very glad they’re there if someone needs to be drug out of a burning building
Portable extinguishers are more reliable, effective, and easier to maintain in the long run. Also, TV makes interuor firefighting look like no thing but without respiratory protection via SCBA you arent going to be doing much of it for very long. A gas mask isnt going to cut it.
I had to laugh at the statement that you are afraid ‘the feds’ will find out you are a gun nut. I think that train left the station a long time ago. I also think probably nobody with big brother really gives a shit.
I didnt say I was afraid the feds would find out Im a gun nut, I said I don’t want to be brought to the attention of them. I’ve no desire for them to go on a fishing expedition in my house under the pretense of ‘someone said there was an illegal stash of [fill in the blank].”
Commander:
When did they NEED an excuse?
If they don’t get a “Tip” they’ll invent one if they want to…
A dedicated indoor fire hose, what an interesting idea. Do yourself a favor, before you do anything make a call to the local fire department and set up an appointment with someone in their fire inspection branch. When you see this person, bounce your ideas off him/her.
BTW your friend who shoved the hose into the wall was very lucky. He could have missed a hot spot and, after it smoldered for a while, it could have grown and burned down his home.
The reason the fire fighters, back in the day, would rip out the wall is because there may be more than one issue. This isn’t as big a deal today as it was, because a lot of fire departments have hand held IR scanners which they use to detect hot spots.
I would be in the be careful camp. Using water with live electrical system? Sounds like someone would be in for a “shock” of their lives. You have to know just what kind of fire you are fighting. I also agree your friend is lucky. Those hot spots can start up hours later. There is a reason to open up and find them.
If you are worried about kerosene or greese fires then a few sand buckets or a stock of baking soda may be more useful however your idea isnt bad for other fires.
I would get some big Halon (if you can find it) or Aviation/computer equipment extinguishers. Prepare for four digit sticker shock. Not only is this good for anything short of a magnesium fire. It won’t damage electronics, is non corrosive etc. Pretty much all aircraft are so equipped (optionally) for in flight fires. Sportys.com will sell them. Of course this is an asphyxiation hazard via oxygen displacement, take appropriate precautions. If you have a buddy at Neptune they might be helpful, Halon is no longer made (ozone depletion) & likely non FAR for commercial ops, so they may have some lying around the hanger.
Halon is now Halatron, a little different. Instead get CO2 extinguishers. Much cheaper. And I don’t know of any department no mater how small that doesn’t use thermal cameras.
Another thing that most don’t know about a C02 extinguishers, they are great for cooling beer. Just a half second to a second burst and the beer will be cooled to just above freezing… As a bonus, doing this at a party will make you the center of attention… 👍 🙂
Marty is totally right a couple of PW extinguishers around the house is a home run. They are very versatile too. Add antifreeze for storing in unheated areas. Or add some dish soap for add punch. About $95 each not cheap but you can refill them on your own if you have a compressor.
I’ve personally knocked down a lot of fire with a PW can.
I’ve been a paid firefighter in a busy city for 15 years. Just to add my support to some of the opinions that have already been expressed:
Water can extinguishers are great, and very capable. It sounds like you already have a few. Any fire that a person can’t extinguish with a few water cans is big enough that they will probably know they need to call the FD the moment they see it. Kitchen fires are the most common I’ve encountered; pan of grease is on fire, it sets off the microwave and the cabinets above the stove. Technically that’s a “room and contents” fire but I’ve put out scores of them with just a water can. The firefighting journals demand at least a 1 3/4″ line for that kind of fire, for safety’s sake. Some people add antifreeze to their water cans for car storage during winter, or dish soap to break surface tension. Both of those additives work as intended but beware that they reduce the lifespan of the extinguishers; mess up the gaskets and pressure guage.
+1 on dry chem extinguishers being niche tools. One really has to do a good cost/benefits analysis before using one. My electrical panel is in a spare bedroom. If I found it on fire I’d call the FD first, then go back in the room, get some face pro, close all the doors and pack the threshold before I discharged that dry chem. The mess they make is terrible.
A garden hose deployable from a wash sink or elsewhere in the house would certainly be handy, and even more capable than a water can. For me, though, it wouldn’t be worth paying a plumber for it. If I couldn’t do the work myself I’d decide to use the water cans or run the hose from outside through a door or window.
Lastly, in civil court, imagine the FD saying “we didn’t do overhaul or check for extension because we didn’t want to make a mess.” Property conservation comes right after life safety in the fire service. There is a good reason the FD tears out the whole wall. It’s a lesson that’s been learned at the cost of homes and lives.
+1 to a lot of what Z. Allen said. In addition to my EMS job I’m a Vol FF/ FF II and I have several Water Extinguishers around the place with some Joy or Dawn added but I have recently paid some extra dollars ($125 of them) for a nice 10 lb Purple K Dry Chem Extinguisher for my kitchen as I have a deep fryer I use a couple times a month. From what I have seen there is not a job an ABC dry chem can do that a Purple K can’t do the same or better (ESP grease/deep fryer fires, employ that goggle fu).
I can see the appeal of a hose in your house but I really don’t see the difference people say that a dry chem makes a mess. Ash and water residue is just as much of a problem to clean up as a dry chem. Add the extra time to turn off the main house breaker, as someone mentioned, it could be shocking.
As you know (or you should) extinguishers have expiration dates, before you go and have them recharged (you are paying to have them recharged right? Much cheaper. Just not the plastic topped models you buy at the box store, only the metal topped ones) So take the expired or about to be expired models and practice putting out a fire. (Not in your house please.) If you use the PASS method (goggle fu) you’ll find that you don’t need to empty the entire bottle on most fires, possibly some short squirts can put the fire out, less mess to clean.
the water heater idea sounds like the ticket. Most water heaters already have a standard hose spigot as a drain. Just leave 50′ of hose hooked up to it so it’s ready if you need it. I use it when I want hot water for mopping and cleaning. It also releases all the built up sediment. 40 gallons of water should take care of most fires.
I also like the C02/halon/nitrogen due to ‘clean’ way to fight a fire.
Water damage is an issue and the resulting clean up and mold issues are a minus.
I have a hose with a nozzle on a reel in my basement that can reach every room in the house, another in my shop, and another in my barn. Easy and very effective and cheap
Three thoughts:
1- I would put it near the kitchen but not IN the kitchen. Given that a fire will likely be in the kitchen you might
have a hard time getting under the sink.
2- I would consider the cost benefit of different fire fighting options. They have been discussed at length above.
3- As always the other side of the fire balance sheet is safety. I suspect a really high percentage of home fires come from a small amount of predictable events. Maybe by making moderate changes you can greatly drop that risk?
In-house hose?
Sure, with severe limits.
Go watch the time from ignition to flashover from a single smoldering chair in an average-sized room. I’ll wait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH0k-NthgTY
Then, please, come back and give me your take.
Then remember you’ll be the guy trying to put out the chair (or whatever),
Except minus spiffy turnouts, heavy boots, gloves, SCBA, a helmet, or nomex underpants. Let alone back-up.
As I sit here alternating ice packs on a very small first-degree thigh burn from spilled hot stew and a damned cat freaking out near my computer station earlier this evening (and it still hurts like a sonofab*tch four hours later; my broken leg a decade ago wasn’t this bad) the prospect of being the guy doing the stop, drop, and roll because I’m on fire, because I hung around too long in a burning house, gives me a certain healthy amount of pause.
At a minute the temp from 4′ to ceiling is in the several-hundred-degree-range, and breathing is toxic and life-ending. At a minute and a half in that video, you’re a human roman candle, and at just over two minutes, the windows blow out, and the entire room is gloriously aflame.
Including anyone standing there playing with a garden hose.
Two. Minutes.
Put a CO2 or halon system in/around your temple of holy armaments, and in the kitchen, where most fires start. (Bonus: Probably a great idea anyway, and probably good for a home insurance bump to offset the cost).
For anything else, if you can’t put it out with a standard extinguisher, you should probably be heading for the exit about the time a standard extinguisher peters out anyways, after about 20-30 seconds. After that, GTFO. If it takes you 1 minute to get into action, you’ve already missed your exit cue.
But for those who still want to stay, suture self. It’ll be your @$$, anyways.
Unless the CZ bunker is actually an uncarpeted concrete bunker, with no plasticized floor coverings, drapes, upholstery, etc. to pump out five dozen toxic gasses per minute of combustion, in which case, you could probably safely stay and play with the garden hose all you want. But something will be burning at that point, and all the video took wasa chair, before everything was burning.
Personally, living in a temperate zone where pipes don’t freeze pretty much this side of another actual Ice Age, I’d put in indoor sprinklers first, but up there in the wilds of Montana, I can completely understand having different priorities about water lines running along above the ceiling.
But I’d submit your friend was a (lucky) dumbass.
No hard feelings. Just saying.
I also remember as if it was yesterday the infantry lecture in boot camp, when the Vietnam-vet sergeant covered hand grenades coming into your foxhole.
Quoted in the vernacular:
“De book say if a grenade come into de hole, you play soccer wid it and kick it into de grenade sump. You wan’ do dat, you go on ahead.
If I’m in de hole, and a grenade come in de hole, de hole too small.
Me? I’ma get da f*ck out da hole. You do whatchu want.”
That’s pretty much how I feel about houses on fire:
“I’ma get da f*ck out.”
And IANAFF, but I’ve BTDT, to a very minor degree:
O For A Muse Of Fire
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/halloween-at-universal-studios-pt-2.html
Just ‘cuz I’m fond of the VA’s use of the acronym RACE for the order of operations in a fire:
Rescue
Alarm
Contain
Evacuate
CERT training (fire suppression module is first) says “bigger than a waste basket you aren’t putting it out anyway” so GTFO.
Of course this is grid up, so being rural, or grid down, the decision to try anyway is probably worth it.
It’s also why you don’t have all your stuff in one place…
n
FWIW, I heard a fire call on the scanner yesterday, dogs barking, possible smoke detector beep in the background (semi-rural area outside of Houston, mutual aid channel for several communities). FD was on scene in a minute or two, confirmed “light smoke” visible thru window, and made entry. FD had the victims out of the structure and the fire suppressed in a couple minutes, once they got there. 30 minutes for EMS to arrive, no further info on the victims, but if they weren’t responding when the smoke detector went off, I’m guessing their outlook was not good.
The neighbors heard the dogs going nuts and stuck their heads out the door, and called because they might have heard the smoke detectors. They didn’t go look, and it was lucky the engine was already nearby. The three calls I heard in about an hour were all knocked down within a minute or two of entry. Getting the FD there, and any EMS response needed seems to be the lengthy aspects, while the actual suppression went very quickly.
WRT fire extinguishers, I bought a pallet of still charged, but out of date extinguishers in a surplus auction. I think I paid $15 for 20 or thirty usable extinguishers. I’ve got ‘in date’ ones too, but the cheap ones make great backup for the trucks, and for practice.
nick
That rule for CERTs is extra risk-adverse because of the limited training and PPE they receive. Most if not all of them are written into the municipalities emergency management plans, and if the CERT members get injured, they have to be covered under the municipality’s insurance. I taught the medical modules for a CERT program for a few years – personally I think the program is far more useful as a means of teaching emergency preparedness at the individual level than it is as a means of creating an additional resource for local disasters.
Depends on how local the “local” is, when half a dozen counties to an entire state is overwhelmed even after they call in all local aid.
Check into “local resources” available for a Cat V hurricane, F5 tornado, or 7.0 quake, and the local authorities will need every swinging Richard they can muster to help out.
That’s why they started CERT. It’s not for a house fire. It’s for a forest fire. That hits town.
I am a huge fan of the CERT training and any other training TPTB see fit to give us.
Check out stopthebleed.org which has been around a while but is finally gaining traction.
Or the idea of an “immediate responder” being the people at the scene when the bad thing happens, and providing training for them — https://www.joinipsa.org/IPSA-Blog/5002703
Along with the rise of Tactical EMS as part of first response to active shooter, I’m finally hopeful that it won’t take a school full of kids who bled out waiting for LEO to “secure the scene” before current doctrine changes.
Check our your local law enforcement, look for programs like COPS, PIP, CPA. Local FD have citizen fire academy and other training too.
Our Constable has a Citizen’s Police Academy, during which we got mini versions of a bunch of stuff, including use of force continuum, traffic stop and patrolling procedures, emergency vehicle operation (driving fast in squad cars), civilian response to active shooter, shoot no shoot simulator, a live range day, and a bunch of other cool stuff. And it’s free.
Get training while you can, learn from the inside what the response is like, what the doctrine is, what resources are available.
nick
Added, WRT the ‘local’ aspect of CERT training, that is built into the training, self – family – community…
I’ll point to my link above and the emerging acknowledgement of reality with the stop the bleed program, and the idea of training the ‘immediate responders’. NB-read the link at the bottom of the article on training citizens in first aid too.
I’ll also point to Houston’s Harvey response. This was almost entirely self organized, and extremely local. People with ability, skillset, or access to the needed equipment JUST DID IT. People will self mobilize (especially if ‘given permission’ in any way) and they can be effective. As the Mayor later said, there weren’t enough boats in .gov’s inventory to do what the people on the scene did.
nick
FWIW , As a FF and in EMS… they were lucky. “I heard it on the scanner…” just looses me right at, “heard” and “scanner”. Each house/fire/motor vehicle “incident” has a case of “well it works it different here.”
CERT has something to remember in the first letter, Civilian. Your CERT training is not FF or EMS training. If you want to be a Fire Fighter or an EMT… go. get. the. training.
CERT is for the people, not the warriors.