Another lipo fire - house damaged

[Hyena]

OK, so here's yet another example of lipo badness.
I was super lucky in this case, as below.

To take it from the top, someone sold a guy a conversion kit and large 18S 30ah lipo pack. The seller apparently bought a kit or parts from me many years ago and has tried to copy the battery construction with a whole bunch of hobbyking lipo. He then sold it for an absolute fortune to a noob, using my name, saying it was one of my kits. Not cool.

This is how I received the battery from the new owner. Not surprisingly, he's not sure about how to use or charge it, with the supplied 25v charger,3 celllogs and a battery medic...



This was made by a guy in Perth named David. David, if you're reading this you're an asshat and a jerk. But I digress
So what he's done is string all the discharge leads together in series and parallel, with the 2 bullets being the main 18S ~75v output.
Back in the day I used to parallel charge my lipo packs, so used a 6 pin anderson block which essentially isolated the sub packs when disconnected and put the packs into series for discharge and parallel charged at 6S voltage. This guy has partially copied that, with a 25v charger but hard wired all the cells into series. Thankfully the new owner didnt try to connect the charger. And lets not begin to think about how the guy was supposed to check, monitor and maintain balance with one BMS for all those individual, unparalleled balance taps!

OK so that's the back story, and in order for the new owner to try and salvage something from this pack I offered to re-wire it and fit a BMS so it was atleast somewhat save and plug and play friendly for him.

When I started to disassemble the rats nest of wiring though I discovered that a number of the cells were in bad shape, 6 of the packs were significantly swollen and reading ~4.25v /cell. The rest of the cells read betwen 3.8 and 3.5v.



So I removed the obviously bad packs and emailed the owner to see what he wants to do with the remaining cells. I'm not too confident in how well they'll go. I can potentially still make a 20ah pack from it but who knows what sort of capacity it'll actually deliver.

Oh yeah, the fire.
So I put the bad cells in a biscuit tin and put them outside my garage until I could dispose of them properly. For long term storage they should have been in something more sturdy but that's all I had on hand. They were sitting a few inches from my closed roller door and about 3 feet from the back of my car.

I went to work this morning on my moto and got a call around lunchtime from the inlaws having picked up my kid from preschool saying the house was full of smoke After a thorough check of the house and garage they could find nothing burnt until they walked outside.
The packs had spontaneously exploded (perhaps the hot sun heated up the tin they were in ?)
The damage is thankfully fairly minor, black bricks I can probably blast clear but the roller door is toast.
There's no sign of the neighbors but inspecting what's left of the packs there's water in the base of the tin and the hose is across my yard, not where I left it yesterday. So someone has seen the fire and tried to hose it out. While we know water on lithium fires isn't too effective I'd say this saved my house, and they probably don't even realise how/why.
I dont know if they were on sight quickly with the hose but I would have expected the damage to be much worst actually. This is 6x 5ah bricks worth - I've seen similar fire from an intentionally detonated single 5ah pack...




When I rolled up the door I found a bottle of oil just a few inches away from the inside of the door. As you can see the heat from the fire even through the door was enough to deform most of the bottle and melt a hole in the top. A few seconds longer and the hole would have melted lower to release 3+ litres of oil, which would have then spread across the floor and surely set the whole joint on fire.
Damn...








So, lessons learned ?

DON'T DELAY in disposing of your old lipo.
I'd like to think I'm a veteran when it comes to lipo and the only other incident I've had in the last 8+ years playing with the stuff was my own fault. I knew the rules, I knew this pack was a gonner and dangerous but it got the drop on me. Had I left it inside the garage instead of outside in the sun it probably wouldn't have blown up. Or maybe it would have anyway, and taken the whole house with it. I'm up for atleast $500-1000 for a new roller door but it could have been much much worse. But I won't REALLY pay until the wife gets home and sees it :lol:

 

[Gregory]

A really close miss. You are a survivor!
I'll buy a lotto ticket for tonight on your behalf. Hope you survive the grilling from she who must be obeyed.

Time to to put more controls in place for all my random assortment of batteries that have accumulated over the years.

 

[Hillhater]

oh jeez !
Lucky escape there.This is getting too close to home.
I have a pack of 6x5Ahr bricks that are still looking and working ok, but are ~ 5yrs old,...so I feel I am on borrowed time.
When not actually in use I store them in the outdoor barbecue (on the actual grill).....but having been away for a few days, I got home to find my son had used the barby and moved the pack inside the storage cabinet....Right next to a spare 5kg GAS BOTTLE. ,
This is beginning to cause sleepless nights.....
OK , maybe I will commandeer the wood fired Pizza oven for lipo bunker :lol:

 

[Kepler]

So glad you dodged that bullet.

My Lipo days are nearly over. Still got a bunch of dead or sick packs hanging around that I have been too lazy to dispose of though. Your incident has given me the kick in the pants to dispose of my leftover packs tomorrow.

Get yourself a JP Spotwelder and join the 18650 builders club.

 

[Hyena]

A really close miss. You are a survivor!

I'm making a habit of this lately! (though less lipo related)

I'll buy a lotto ticket for tonight on your behalf. Hope you survive the grilling from she who must be obeyed.

Thanks, shout me a tent out of your winnings ? :lol:

Time to to put more controls in place for all my random assortment of batteries that have accumulated over the years.

Ironically I grabbed a filing cabinet being thrown out at work last week for the express purpose of storing batteries in but hadn't had a chance to bring it home yet!

I got home to find my son had used the barby and moved the pack inside the storage cabinet....Right next to a spare 5kg GAS BOTTLE. ,

As I was reading that I was thinking it was going to end with "he lit the BBQ before opening the hood to find the lipo inside!

Still got a bunch of dead or sick packs hanging around that I have been too lazy to dispose of though. Your incident has given me the kick in the pants to dispose of my leftover packs tomorrow.

I have many more old packs laying around myself - one you can see in the photo just off to the side of the oil bottle.
Glad my tale can be a cautionary one for others.

Get yourself a JP Spotwelder and join the 18650 builders club.

I've been eyeing them off for a while now, it's certainly high on my wish list.
The only reason I haven't bought one yet is I dont have the time to actually build them so I've been outsoucing it.
I have a few multistar packs left here but after that I'll be purely 18650.


Just spoke to the wife, she hasn't seen the burn marks yet and I seem to have forgotten to tell her about the little incident.
Anyone know how much a roller door weighs ? I wonder if I can sneak out tomorrow and fit a replacement before she notices :lol:

 

[Samd]

Ouch!
Graffiti the roller door and pretend it was someone else?

I only store puffy lipo underwater nowadays. Bunnings plastic square tub.
Sand would do.

 

[miuan]

So you had a bunch of heavily swollen aged HK cells charged to 4.25V that, most likely, got repeatedly overcharged in the past, perhaps to much higher levels, judging from the severe pack imbalance. You released the compression on those cells and the cells exploded in short time. Did I get it right?

 

[ozman]

What would be the best way to dispose of old lipo?
I live in a national park and if this type of incident happened at my place a lot of people could be in danger.

 

[Lurkin]

your batteries/fire? No officer, know nothing about it...

insurance claim on door ftw.

 

[dogman dan]

Even if "you did it" insurance should still cover your damage. Just like if you had a boo boo starting your charcoal grill.

Excellent point, about storing sketchy batteries in a tin box in the sun. In retrospect, perhaps storing them in a spot that's essentially a solar oven was not a great idea. In my area, a south facing spot like that reaches 140F or about 60C.

Discharging them from 4.25v might have helped some. But you were in a hurry, it wasn't really your project in the first place, etc. You let your guard down, it happens to us all.

I keep typing, store lipo where you'd build a fire, but in fact I keep my excess lipo's in an old fridge. It's sitting with it's back against a back garage wall. Hmmm.... Hopefully the fridge keeps them cool enough to not go off by themselves, and all suspect packs are kept more than half discharged till I get around to harvesting the still good cells out of the pack. All are in steel boxes, inside the fridge. But clearly the steel does not do much to retard the flames once they go off.

 

[drew12345]

That's scary! I've always stored mine outside especially with young kids in the house. This makes me want to move them even further from my house. Thanks for sharing and glad wasn't more damage done.

 

[999zip999]

Yo bro you are smart plus lucky. Now see how hard that soot is to scrub off the door it like you need a sand blaster. Good luck to you and yours.

 

[Lurkin]

Even if "you did it" insurance should still cover your damage. Just like if you had a boo boo starting your charcoal grill.

Policy dependent. Was more meaning being careful of accepting responsibility. I'm not 100% sure, but it's likely there would be a criminal charge for starting uncontrolled fires in Australia....

 

[Hillhater]

.....but in fact I keep my excess lipo's in an old fridge. It's sitting with it's back against a back garage wall. Hmmm....

DmD,.. I sure hope that fridge doesn't have the usual plastic interior and polystyrene insulation !?

 

[Hyena]

Ouch!
Graffiti the roller door and pretend it was someone else?

Too late, she knows and was initially calm casually discussing other things then hit me with it.
Like an under age teenager casually trying to buy chips and other bits and pieces in a shop then slipping in a bottle of booze :lol:

Burying in sand or the dirt in general is a good idea and how I've gotten rid of some in the past. Under controlled conditions for proper disposal I've discharged them right down then sat them in a hole and whacked the shit out of them to fill them with holes. Discharged you just get the slightest fizzle and that's it. I do this to ensure there's no residual energy in it so I'm not essentially creating a land mine! Not that they'd do much other than just smoke up through the ground.
Hmm.. maybe good for Halloween coming up

So you had a bunch of heavily swollen aged HK cells charged to 4.25V that, most likely, got repeatedly overcharged in the past, perhaps to much higher levels, judging from the severe pack imbalance. You released the compression on those cells and the cells exploded in short time. Did I get it right?

Technially, allegedly, the cells were brand new. They were sold as new to this guy anyway and he was never able to charge them to due the wrong charger being supplied. They did sit for maybe 12 months though. So whether this guy fully overcharged them before delivery or what, I have no idea.
You're right about removing the compression on them though, they were in a foam surrounding in a plastic lead acid battery box but were jammed in pretty tight. When removing them they did make a slight cracking noise, not from the battery itself but from the swelling stretching the heatshrink and the duct tape moving around.

insurance claim on door ftw.

No insurance claim, I'll just pay for a new door myself. I think the excess would probably be more than that anyway.
As dogman said it *should* be covered anyway and is no different to any other accidental fire. If there was more significant damage then yes, I would have to use insurance.

Excellent point, about storing sketchy batteries in a tin box in the sun. In retrospect, perhaps storing them in a spot that's essentially a solar oven was not a great idea.

I thought about it some more and I dont think they would have gotten super super hot. Yes they were exposed to direct light but it shouldn't have been scorching hot. My car was only a few feet away and would have blocked most of the sun and when I touched the roller doors and surrounding areas around an hour later it was all cool to the touch. On really hot days in the sun you almost burn your hand on the roller door, so I dont think that was the major contributing factor.

Discharging them from 4.25v might have helped some. But you were in a hurry, it wasn't really your project in the first place, etc. You let your guard down, it happens to us all.

Yep, prior to disposing I would have discharged them down, for sure. It was 11pm the previous night though and I didnt want to be putting high loads on them in my garage given they were already looking fairly hand-grenadey. Is this the first case anyone has heart of them spontaneously going off ? I dont think I've heard of this before and they typically only go off while charging or physically damaged. That said, I didn't see what happened at the moment they went off. Who knows, they could have even been punctured by one of the millions of birds around here pecking at the wiring thinking they were worms ? (ok, that's a long shot :lol: )

there would be a criminal charge for starting uncontrolled fires in Australia....

Intentionally, yeah, that's arson. This is certainly not the case though.

 

[Lurkin]

Dude I'm not trying to give you ideas :lol:

The local tip might have a disposal area for them? they take waste oil/car batteries etc?

 

[Hyena]

Aldi does, they have battery recycling bins and the front of most of their stores. I dumped 8 lipo bricks in one earlier in the year. Hey, it doesnt say no lipo :lol:

 

[Kepler]

I just finished dumping 30kg of LiPo at my local recycling station. I rang my local council first to see if they would take such a large amount. They agreed to take them on a once off basis due to the high cost of recycling these cells.

Rolled up at local recycling station still expecting some issues when they saw the actual amount of LiPo I had. As soon as I mentioned that I had spoken to the council and they had given the Ok, They were fine. Just dumped them off next to the car batteries. Next time I was told to bring them in with a max of 2 packs at the time.

Very pleased to have them out of my workshop.

 

[Gregory]

30kg! lol.

Do you need a whole new garage door, can't you just get a can of colorbond paint and respray it?


BTW we won $23 on the lotto, sorry can't afford a whole tent. Can barely afford a new biscuit tin.....

 

[justin_le]

Is this the first case anyone has heart of them spontaneously going off ? I dont think I've heard of this before and they typically only go off while charging or physically damaged.

This is not unique at all, and there's another thread on the topic of spontaneous LiPo fires when not charging or discharging that's been started here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1108547#p1108547

Admittedly some number of lithium fires that seem to be spontaneous can be the result of an electrical BMS failure or wiring fault that then causes cells to discharge or short, and unfortunately the evidence is usually destroyed in the inferno so in many situations we'd never know. But in cases like yours where there is no BMS circuit to speak of, unless you really think a bird pecked through it it certainly fits the bill of spontaneous cell fire.

And glad things went down with minimal damage to property and self! Not everyone is so lucky. Close calls and wake-up calls can be healthy at changing everyone's habits for the the better and prevent future incidents that are a lot worse.

 

[Hillhater]

Not really spontaneous ignition ...they were repeatedly overcharged, and cooked in a sealed tin box in the Australian sun !
..even my sweaty underwear would have ignited in those conditions .. :lol:

At this point i would refer you to an old thread on the same topic , and my "Ultimate safe storage" solution for lipo
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37208&hilit=safe+lipo+storage

Remember..
in the event of initial smoke..the smoke detector above the bag, screams an alarm .
if there is excess heat or flames the bag melts or the rope burns and the lipo is dumped into a 90,000 ltr pool ( deep end !)
result ?..no more sleepless nights !
.. :lol: :lol: pity i sold that house,...maybe i can repeat the arrangement over my wifes water feature !

 

[dogman dan]

Re disposal, my local landfill takes all types of batteries for recycling with no questions asked.

But to avoid losing this privilege, I do discharge packs 100%, or close to it, before disposal. In my case, I just hook them up to my 24v lawnmower, and let it spin till it comes to a stop. Then I salvage connectors off them, tape up the bare wires, and take them to the recycle.

Re the fridge, yes, it's got the usual plastic interior. Everything inside is also in an ammo can, which may do no good at all. The main idea of the fridge is to keep them cooler, and dry. Nothing to do with fireproof. At this time, I did clean out all the dead packs, and now it contains only good, un puffed packs, at 3.8v or less.

I do need to move that fridge farther from the house. In the future, I can use a much smaller storage space. By next summer, I'll be down to only as much lipo as I need to run my 24v mower. But in summer, the grill is just way too hot a place to store them.

 

[sonnetg]

I am so done with RC lipos. This is down right scary. I dont use RC lipos for ebikes, but i do use these for RC helis. It's scaring the heck out of me now to keep any trace of lipos at home.

I am glad that your house was ok and no one was harmed during this fiasco, but this sure was a close call.

 

[heathyoung]

Shit dude! This sort of stuff is a worry.

Go down to your local army disposals store and get some ammo cases - they are cheap and pretty indestructable (remember what they are designed to hold).

Don't put the lids on too tight though.

 

[Hillhater]

Shit dude! This sort of stuff is a worry.

Go down to your local army disposals store and get some ammo cases - they are cheap and pretty indestructable (remember what they are designed to hold).

Don't put the lids on too tight though.

Im not convinced an ammo case would prevent combustion. or gasses and flames escaping..
..they certainly were not intended to contain an ammunition explosion !
what you need is a fireproof container in an area where any fire can do no harm, like an old BBQ which would not cause a neighborhood panic if smoke was seen coming from it.
And dont store too much in one place !