(no subject)

[the_rck]

A couple of weeks ago, Scott signed up for one of those trip to Disneyworld contests while he and Delia were out shopping. We didn't win that, but we did win a child's bike. The catch was that we had to listen to a sales pitch for fire safety equipment to get it. Scott and I considered the cost of a kid's bike and decided that we could spare a couple of hours to get one.

The bike is, unfortunately, a Bratz bike. We peeled off the decals, but the seat, handlebar pad and handlebar bag all have the name on them. (We tried to lose the bag and water bottle, but Delia found them almost immediately.) If we can get rid of the rest of the branding, I think it'll be a good bike for Delia. Fortunately, she has no idea who/what 'Bratz' are. This bike is sixteen inches and replaces her old twelve inch. Both bikes have built in training wheels. This one has both a hand brake and a pedal brake. Scott's gotten it assembled properly. All that's left is inflating the tires and letting Delia ride.

The bike sat in its box in the living room for a couple of days. Delia wanted to open it immediately because she wanted to know what was in it. I thought she might figure it out by reading the box, but she figured it out by peeking through a hole in the box and seeing a wheel. She's utterly thrilled and considers the bike an additional birthday present (which it kind of is).

The salesman is very personable. He's a fireman as well with this as his second job. Part of the sales pitch involved showing us a DVD about home fires and having us do a short quiz on fire statistics. Both are scary and left me with extra fire anxiety for days (as I'm sure they're meant to do since that makes people more likely to buy. It's just worse for me given the pre-existing anxiety troubles).

The difficulty in selling me fire safety equipment is that I've always believed that, if our house catches fire in the middle of the night, we'll all die. During the day, we'd probably get out fine but not at night. I don't know if any equipment would help that. Scott's more inclined to buy equipment, and he's right that we ought at least to have fire extinguishers. I can also believe that ionization smoke alarms don't have a very long useful life.

I'm going to leave most of the decision up to Scott. He's got a better feel for whether the information offered about the materials and techniques used to build this equipment is potentially accurate and whether the differences from the standard equipment mean anything useful in reality. I was impressed, though, that the salesman pinpointed the study as a potential fire trouble spot. That matched my opinion of the room. It's full of dust, active computer equipment and paper. Scott didn't like hearing that one, and realistically, there's not much we can do to clear it up while keeping our computer access.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

You can actually get out of a burning house pretty quick if you're alerted to the fact that it's burning before the smoke fills the space. Fire travels along the walls going up. Smoke likewise goes up, so you do have chance to exit. It all depends on knowing about it in time and resisting the temptation to try and fight the fire. Both fire I've been in during the recent years I've managed to get out with the cats. And during the last one I had a broken collarbone. The first one, the fire was right next door so it was a lot like being in a house on fire and the last one involved an explosion just upstairs. Both cases, there was ample warning. In the first case we had a good fire alarm system and in the second, the explosion provided the audible alarm.

I think you can reduce the risk of fire in the study by containing the papers in some reasonably air tight container. Fuel without air does not make for a fire.

[the_rck]

For the study, I get the impression that the biggest hazard was the active computer equipment combined with the dust. The papers just mean that anything that happens will grow.

My attitude on fire comes from trying to minimize my everyday tendency to panic. The more that I think I actually can do, the more I worry about when I'll need to do it. It's a serious disability related to the anxiety. I suspect that, in practice, I'd move pretty damned fast to get us all out of the house once I knew there was a fire, but being fatalistic about it allows me to sleep. That is, if I tell myself that I can't do anything, my hyper-activated fight or flight tendencies don't constantly chew on the need to be ready right *now* and wouldn't be able to sleep without serious drugs. I have to find a way to let go of it.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I dunno if it offers any comfort, but we all come from a long line of lightly singed ape things who've learned to run fast from fire even if we do play with it. Seriously, it's all pretty automatic. First fire, without even thinking, I managed to get the cat carrier out of the closet, stuff two cats into and get out the door in not much over a minute. It wasn't until I got out that I realized what I'd managed to do. We've got some pretty efficient schema to let us do what needs to be done.

Also, if the computer room is a problem, then mount a fire extinguisher right near the light switch. My own experience with free standing electronics is that the fire goes straight up. Just give it a clear enough path and you should be good to go. Seriously, all the prep you really need to do on that score is just keep the papers away from the ignition sources.

I learned all about this in my college lab electronics courses. Generations of previous students had bypassed the fuzes on our breadboards with solder for some reason. We started to do some fairly high current projects for the op-amp section and more than one of these things went up in smoke. The fire was pretty much a straight line up. Same thing when the transformer on my old vacuum tube amp went up. That one was my fault. I bypassed the fuze on that because I wasn't sure where I could find a replacement. Lastly dust is not flammable as the salesman might make it out. Household dust is largely stuff like dead skin and fabric lint. These things need a fairly high energy input to get going and unless there's more easily ignitable fuel laying around, it'll smolder itself out. If you work in flour in the study or do routing(the woodworking kind), your dust hazard is not too severe.

Flour by the way is a great mad scientist sort of thing. A tall building, a sack of flour and an oil soaked rag makes a nice fireball.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

That should read unless work in flour...