Last night I went to the garage and lit the propane heater. One of the small ceramic ones rated at 9000 BTU or such that I use with a 6' hose to a 20#LP tank. It is enough to keep the chill off when working in the shop.
I watched it for a minute to make sure all was fine and went back upstairs to do some dishes. Went back down stairs to the the sound of a jet engine. Opened the garage door to see black smoke and flames to the ceiling. Grabbed the fire extenguisher, hit the fire and then opened the door and dragged the smoldering mess outside to cool.
I'm still blowing black snot this morning. I hate to think what it did to my lungs.
I watched it for a minute to make sure all was fine and went back upstairs to do some dishes. Went back down stairs to the the sound of a jet engine. Opened the garage door to see black smoke and flames to the ceiling. Grabbed the fire extenguisher, hit the fire and then opened the door and dragged the smoldering mess outside to cool.
I'm still blowing black snot this morning. I hate to think what it did to my lungs.
Attachments
Rapid flame propagation through the gas cloud may result in singed body parts as some of the gutsier kids in my long ago ninth grade gym class could attest.
Probably not a good experiment..
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That is seriously scary.. Hope you report the incident to local fire marshall, CPSC and the manufacturer/seller of said propane heater. Who made this one? (I and I'm sure many others would like to avoid it..)
CPSC here: http://www.cpsc.gov/
Report unsafe products here: http://www.cpsc.gov/about/contact.html
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This is the "stupid things I've done" thread, indeed you acted in a quite clever way
It is actually true. I took my dog away from some people (at the time it was their dog) who were neglecting and abusing him and he turned up positive for heart worms. I named him Gato. I don't know what his name was before or even if he had one. For those who do not know the treatment kills the heart worms but can also kill the dog. What they do is inject an arsenic based compound directly into their heart. Bottom line is it makes them have horrible farts for about 6 months. I mean horrible. I thought about killing him. That's not all there is to it but that's all there is regarding farts. He survived the treatment and I survived the terrible farts. Barely.
But it is true that only about 5 out of 9 people tested had methane in their farts. That does not necessarily mean that 5 out of 9 people don't because it was not a very large sample of people tested. But it is safe to say that some people do not have methane in their farts.
But it is true that only about 5 out of 9 people tested had methane in their farts. That does not necessarily mean that 5 out of 9 people don't because it was not a very large sample of people tested. But it is safe to say that some people do not have methane in their farts.
This is the "stupid things I've done" thread, indeed you acted in a quite clever way
The stupid thing I did was not checking the fitting where the hose connected it to the LP tank. I've seen them leak there before and should have checked it with soapy water.
It was a Mr Heater Buddy 9000 BTU heater from Northern Tools.
this thread is full of win.
some advise i can offer from past experience..
Don't lift a mason jar full of battery acid out of a sand bath at 300 Celsius.
Don't build a downs cell before building a chlorine absorption system.
Don't leave extra tube transformers plugged in, lest you pick them up by the terminals accidentally.
Don't recharge batteries with AC to see what happens.
Don't fill a car sized balloon full of hydrogen and oxygen in stoichiometric ratio without wearing an esd wrist strap.
some advise i can offer from past experience..
Don't lift a mason jar full of battery acid out of a sand bath at 300 Celsius.
Don't build a downs cell before building a chlorine absorption system.
Don't leave extra tube transformers plugged in, lest you pick them up by the terminals accidentally.
Don't recharge batteries with AC to see what happens.
Don't fill a car sized balloon full of hydrogen and oxygen in stoichiometric ratio without wearing an esd wrist strap.
Even if you are a pair of young people with a YouTube cult following.......It is not a good idea to microwave the air bag from a car.
It is also not a good idea to discover this video on your smart phone while bored in a meeting full of managers. I couldn't stop laughing, which prompted the meeting chair to play the video on the big screen in the meeting room. As expected, the audience (engineers and engineering managers) either thought it was hillarius, or totally stupid.
YouTube - Is It A Good Idea To Microwave AN AIRBAG!?!
It is also not a good idea to discover this video on your smart phone while bored in a meeting full of managers. I couldn't stop laughing, which prompted the meeting chair to play the video on the big screen in the meeting room. As expected, the audience (engineers and engineering managers) either thought it was hillarius, or totally stupid.
YouTube - Is It A Good Idea To Microwave AN AIRBAG!?!
Dodging Death
Hi all,
Will keep this short and to the point.
I used to work as a contractor for a military lab as part of their electronic weapons program. Most of that I can’t talk about, but some is safe.
One fine day the boss who is a laser physicist, a senior scientist, and I walked into the lab that had a commercially made Tesla Coil.
It was used in plasma research.
So it was not configured like your normal one.
It was driven by a high voltage power supply, feeding a cap bank and a radar keying tube.
The goal was to make pulses of high voltage discharge when keyed.
We all thought it was ‘off’. Wrong.
This coil was in a big plexi pipe about 5 feet tall filled with oil.
Had a 24 inch discharge sphere on the top.
When it is working at full honk, it will make a three foot discharge and the plasma will be the size of your thumb, a heavy heavy spark. It scorched a three inch target sphere, blowing the chrome off at the points of impact.
When the guys and I walked into the lab I hear a ticking sound, like oil dripping.
I look under the unit to see if that’s the case and then I get nailed.
There was a hair thin spark running down the back side of the coil into the ground.
When I got close guess who presented a better path?
It took me in the side of the head. About 24 inches of spark.
Best guess was about 500kv at nill current.
Compare it to the worst carpet shock in a life time plus 20dB.
The thing was left on, but at a low setting. Had it been at full a good part of the skull would have been lifted off.
Jumped about a foot, bit my lip and had a number of un kind things to say.
Did not even knock me down.
I had been to Iraq twice as a contractor and this did not meet my criteria for a reportable event, but the boss types felt the need to report it.
Ended up having to bliss out four levels of management over the event.
They were all scared silly I would sue them.
No honor in that.
So yes life in electronic weapons research can be exciting.
Another fine day I managed to fry a 100M ohm resistor with a lot of voltage.
It was one of those three inch ones used in transmitters. We were using it for a load on an experimental power source.
Not too many can make that claim.
Did a lot of screwy things, amazing that I survived.
Some of your antics nearly put me in the hospital from laughter just reading up to this point.
The wife got concerned.
The 400J banana bit caused me a muscle pull.
If life was easy we would not have ancestors.
Be well all
Jack Crow aka Radio Mike
Herndon VA
Hi all,
Will keep this short and to the point.
I used to work as a contractor for a military lab as part of their electronic weapons program. Most of that I can’t talk about, but some is safe.
One fine day the boss who is a laser physicist, a senior scientist, and I walked into the lab that had a commercially made Tesla Coil.
It was used in plasma research.
So it was not configured like your normal one.
It was driven by a high voltage power supply, feeding a cap bank and a radar keying tube.
The goal was to make pulses of high voltage discharge when keyed.
We all thought it was ‘off’. Wrong.
This coil was in a big plexi pipe about 5 feet tall filled with oil.
Had a 24 inch discharge sphere on the top.
When it is working at full honk, it will make a three foot discharge and the plasma will be the size of your thumb, a heavy heavy spark. It scorched a three inch target sphere, blowing the chrome off at the points of impact.
When the guys and I walked into the lab I hear a ticking sound, like oil dripping.
I look under the unit to see if that’s the case and then I get nailed.
There was a hair thin spark running down the back side of the coil into the ground.
When I got close guess who presented a better path?
It took me in the side of the head. About 24 inches of spark.
Best guess was about 500kv at nill current.
Compare it to the worst carpet shock in a life time plus 20dB.
The thing was left on, but at a low setting. Had it been at full a good part of the skull would have been lifted off.
Jumped about a foot, bit my lip and had a number of un kind things to say.
Did not even knock me down.
I had been to Iraq twice as a contractor and this did not meet my criteria for a reportable event, but the boss types felt the need to report it.
Ended up having to bliss out four levels of management over the event.
They were all scared silly I would sue them.
No honor in that.
So yes life in electronic weapons research can be exciting.
Another fine day I managed to fry a 100M ohm resistor with a lot of voltage.
It was one of those three inch ones used in transmitters. We were using it for a load on an experimental power source.
Not too many can make that claim.
Did a lot of screwy things, amazing that I survived.
Some of your antics nearly put me in the hospital from laughter just reading up to this point.
The wife got concerned.
The 400J banana bit caused me a muscle pull.
If life was easy we would not have ancestors.
Be well all
Jack Crow aka Radio Mike
Herndon VA
This chemist has a list of Things He Won't Work With:
In the Pipeline:
Here's a sample:
"An early favorite has appeared in my “most alarming chemical papers” file for this year. Thomas Klapoetke and Joerg Stierstorfer from Munich have published one with a simple title that might not sound unusual to people outside the field, but has made every chemist I’ve shown it to point like a bird dog: “The CN7 Anion”. The reason that one gets our attention is that compounds with lots of nitrogens in them – more specifically, compounds with a high percentage of nitrogen by weight – are a spirited bunch. They hear the distant call of the wild, and they know that with just one leap of the fence they can fly free as molecules of nitrogen gas. And that’s never an orderly process. If my presumably distant cousin Nick Lowe does indeed love the sound of breaking glass, then these are his kinds of compounds. A more accurate song title for these latest creations would be “I Love the Sound Of Shrapnel Bouncing Off My Welder’s Mask”, but that sort of breaks up the rhythm."
In the Pipeline:
Here's a sample:
"An early favorite has appeared in my “most alarming chemical papers” file for this year. Thomas Klapoetke and Joerg Stierstorfer from Munich have published one with a simple title that might not sound unusual to people outside the field, but has made every chemist I’ve shown it to point like a bird dog: “The CN7 Anion”. The reason that one gets our attention is that compounds with lots of nitrogens in them – more specifically, compounds with a high percentage of nitrogen by weight – are a spirited bunch. They hear the distant call of the wild, and they know that with just one leap of the fence they can fly free as molecules of nitrogen gas. And that’s never an orderly process. If my presumably distant cousin Nick Lowe does indeed love the sound of breaking glass, then these are his kinds of compounds. A more accurate song title for these latest creations would be “I Love the Sound Of Shrapnel Bouncing Off My Welder’s Mask”, but that sort of breaks up the rhythm."
I am thinking a 3 inch resistor would probably be hell I don't know. When I was quality control for Ross Systems we used 500 watt resistors for the load when inspecting power amps and they were maybe between 8 inches to a foot long. So three inches (depending on the material) would be a considerable watts rating and being 100 M ohm which is a very high value of resistance and applying ohms law I would guess frying that required a heck of a blast.
Stupid thing I did today (two things actually).
First, was doing a reaction on some CdSe quantum dots and the reaction was done in a solvent that is actually a solid at room temperature. So I heat up the solvent and begin injecting my nanocrystals. One small problem, I forgot to open up the connection to the nitrogen line. So I was injecting around 40mL into a SEALED container. Needless to say I blew the reflux condensor off, which sprayed nanocrystal and solvent EVERYWHERE (it hit the ceiling of the fume hood I was working in), it got on the schlenk line, the hot plate, the temp controller, me, etc. Of course since it is a solid at room temperature (with limited solubility in much of anything) it pretty much instantly solidified on EVERY surface it touched and was a beast to clean up. Well once the reaction was complete I had to add a different solvent to it to start cleaning it up. Well, remember where I mentioned it sprayed on the temp controller, well I thought it read 70ish degrees it was really at 90ish degrees (celcius). Dumped my solvent in and boom, instaboil sprays all over the areas I had just cleaned up, my hand, etc.
Ugh what a day.
First, was doing a reaction on some CdSe quantum dots and the reaction was done in a solvent that is actually a solid at room temperature. So I heat up the solvent and begin injecting my nanocrystals. One small problem, I forgot to open up the connection to the nitrogen line. So I was injecting around 40mL into a SEALED container. Needless to say I blew the reflux condensor off, which sprayed nanocrystal and solvent EVERYWHERE (it hit the ceiling of the fume hood I was working in), it got on the schlenk line, the hot plate, the temp controller, me, etc. Of course since it is a solid at room temperature (with limited solubility in much of anything) it pretty much instantly solidified on EVERY surface it touched and was a beast to clean up. Well once the reaction was complete I had to add a different solvent to it to start cleaning it up. Well, remember where I mentioned it sprayed on the temp controller, well I thought it read 70ish degrees it was really at 90ish degrees (celcius). Dumped my solvent in and boom, instaboil sprays all over the areas I had just cleaned up, my hand, etc.
Ugh what a day.
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