Anyone hear about a fire at Phil's?

[tho1mas]

The wife showed me a KY-3 video clip about Phil's resort, had what looked like a serious fire.

I hope it wasn't as bad as it looked.

[snagged in outlet 3]

I hope everything is alright.

[Mitch f]

I believe that was his bathhouse a couple of weeks ago, but not sure

[Phil Lilley]

I did!

It was an awesome fire, as fires go.  I'll post some pics and video later today.

I was at the RecPlex playing ball -- someone had to come get me.

It was a building just off the main building where our office/shop is.  The building houses the laundry/storage and #22 or the "Lilley Pad" unit.

The fire was contained to just the laundry although #22 sustained a little smoke damage and holes in the walls and ceiling where the firefighters poked looking for more fire.  Cosmetic stuff and easy to fix.

Lincoln Hunt, long time guests and good friend, was walking his dog before leaving for Dallas about 6.  I had left at 5:30 and didn't notice the smoke coming out of the gable vent in #22 as I drove by or I would have caught it 30 minutes earlier.  He called 911 and went and woke up Marsha.  BFD was there in less than 10 minutes.

It started, I believe, from either a power strip or the electric radiator heater plugged into that strip next to a stack of towels on a shelf.  The fire marshall couldn't find any definitive evidence so he filed it as unknown.  Now my insurance ppl will look at it and see what they think next week.  Regardless, we have good coverage.  It was a total loss... completely gutted.

There are so many positives to this event there's no way not to be very grateful of the outcome.  Now we have a project we can work on this winter, although ti will take us away from some fishing and hunting no doubt.

The media has spun it to look like it was caused by drier lent... pretty funny.

[Ham]

I’m sorry about your troubles Phil, but I appreciate your Good attitude about them. 

 

[fishinwrench]

Yikes!

I have fire paranoia to the point that it irritates everyone else in the house/shop.  Leaving the house while the clothes dryer is running or a crock pot/coffee pot is on gives me genuine anxiety.  

One of the girls left a hair straightener on sitting right next to a plastic bottle of nail polish remover.   I seriously contemplated putting her up for adoption.

[Phil Lilley]

We have so many possible points of potential problems it’s kinda overwhelming. 

Am going to shop for one of those devices that detect heat. The fire guys had one. Should spot potential hot spots in our wiring. That concerns me more than power strips. 

[BilletHead]

44 minutes ago, Phil Lilley said:

We have so many possible points of potential problems it’s kinda overwhelming. 

Am going to shop for one of those devices that detect heat. The fire guys had one. Should spot potential hot spots in our wiring. That concerns me more than power strips. 

         Truly good advice and even more scary is what we cannot see behind walls where critters like mice can do so much damage. I got to go with a guy with one of those thermal devices into some of the substations we had. Scanned the high side HV transmission sides of transformers mechanical connections, buss bars and low side connecters distribution sides. Capacitors and voltage regulators. Found many hotspots for maintenance. instead of a failure and fire having thousands of people out of power we could switch around and keep those meters turning .

       Glad  you actually dodged a bullet on this one Phil. Could of been much , much worse,

  BilletHead 

[MOPanfisher]

Glad it wasn't worse Phil.  Fire is always a big worry for me.

[fishinwrench]

The house we are in now was built new in '06 and I had the breaker box placed in the master bedroom closet.   In 2011 my wife kept smelling "something" in the closet, it didn't smell like anything hot but smelled more like fresh plastic and sometimes the smell was stronger than other times.  I actually thought it was just the new carpet, paint, or something.  Then one night the hot water wasn't very warm so I went to check the water heater breaker, and when I opened the closet door there was visable smoke coming from around the breaker panel.  I tried to kill the main breaker and it was stuck, wouldn't move to the off position.  I have another main switch outside that kills the power to both house and shop so I ran out and threw that one.  

Called the electrician that installed it and it turned out to be a bad main breaker that was only allowing 40% of the current to pass through it.  Had to replace the whole service and all of the breakers that were less than 5 years old.   Within the next 6 months I had to have a well pump and water heater control boards and elements replaced (all were brand new 4 years ago) then the next year the heat pump electrical system went south.  

Voltage losses reap havoc with everything downstream of the problem causing it.  I see the same type thing happen in boats and outboard charging systems all the time.  When voltage drops, for whatever reason, things start getting hot right away.