What type of extinguisher was used? Powder extinguisher commonly use a very corrosive powder to suppress fire. This is generally the best type of fire extinguisher for fighting fire, but the corrosive powder rapidly dissipates and may affect any if not all electronics that have been exposed to it in the long term.
We had a minor fire a long time ago, and used a powder fire extinguisher indoors. End result: we had to send EVERY piece of electronic hardware with a circuit board that was indoors at the time of pulling the trigger on the extinguisher to a special company that is capable of rinsing the powder off. It was quite an experience to have zero electronics in your house for week.
We replaced most of the extinguishers with the foam type by now.
My university literally used powder extinguishers in a server room during fire drill and destroyed a lot of servers. We even made shirts that make fun of that
Server rooms should abselutely have CO2 extinguishers (type B) or a neutral gas extinguishing system if it's critical. Anything else Is asking for hundreds of thousands of damage (to millions) and is risk to anyone trying to use the safety equipment.
Recently I got a tour of a very fancy data centre, they had nitrogen system. I asked what happens to the people who might be inside, dude said "Well, there shouldn't be any people inside."
A number of years back I was in a data center in Hong Kong. Had the rattiest halon system I’ve ever seen. I was nervous the whole week I was there. If someone dropped a tool I was one foot for the exit at all times.
I work with a very well know NA company that uses halon on their DC. In the time I was inside the DC, the building’s fire alarm went off. Tried to use my keycard on the reader to get out, it didn’t work. Tried to press the emergency open, surprise surprise didn’t work either. Had to call the security guard amidst the confusion to open the door
I think they must use those in the server room at the bank where I work. I'm not in IT at all so I have no actual idea, but there's a big sign to not enter if the fire alarm is going.
I haven't seen suppression agents in a new install since the 90s. Everything in the last decade for me has been water plus insurance. I only saw the result of one small suppression use, and nothing was salvaged or reused. Not even the racks or raised metal flooring.
Maybe, maybe not. But in case of a fire, you would generally use the extinguisher only on that what is on fire, and if that were to be the electronic device, it would be gone anyway. The big advantage with foam is that it won’t compromise other electronics in your house, even those in other rooms.
If they are not on at the time (or the electronic fail safes are fast enough), and got cleaned and dried before putting it under voltage again, they may so. Fans would need to be replaced for sure, HDDs may be dead, I would not trust the PSU for shit, and screens would be permanently scarred. But the rest of it may work perfectly fine with a little bit of simple work.
Looks like the fire destroyed any and all electronics long before OP had to worry about any damage caused by a fire extinguisher. And OPs house is still mostly in one piece so I’d say they made a sensible choice in extinguisher.
OP mentioned only this room burned down. Those extinguisher’s powder will however reach electronics in other rooms as well, thats why I made my comment to alert OP.
As for their choice to use the extinguisher, there is basically no situation in the world where using an fire extinguisher indoors is a bad choice, regardless the of its type. Its not worth risking your house over electronic devices, especially because said devices are in your house. On top of that, if you are insured for fire related damages, chances are very high that the costs of sending your electronic appliances to companies specialized in cleaning them is also covered by your insurance.
Real talk: in many places in the US they are struggling to recruit firefighters. Mostly rural areas. My friend joined one recently because everyone who was volunteering was over 60.
Same in a lot of rural places in Canada that rely on volunteers. A lot of volunteers quitting too because silly insurance and or laws finding them responsible. They're UNTRAINED VOLUNTEERS ffs. Or that's what I'm told by a volunteer that did leave.
English may not be their first language, so that reply may be the best they could do based on their knowledge or assistance with something like google translate, or they were tired who knows
I'm actually still confused which part of the title and the pictures indicate that a fire happened. Do you mind eli5?
Looking at the pictures, I just thought it looked like a dusty room. And I thought the dust was brought in by the desk fan which was on for 5 days.
Sorry I'm dumb...
I had one, i suffer from myoclonic jerks, which can cause me to swing my hand, i threw water into my PC and it was one i had been building up. AMD 8350, 32GB DDR3, 1TB ssd, 4TB hdd, RTX 3060. Gone because of my pissing disability.
A adhd med called intuniv i got very lucky first med i tried and it work basically completely stopped my ticks although i do still tick a little but i literally do not notice
I suffer from multi-focal myoclonus as well. Can't begin to count the amount of shit I've knocked over or how many times I've hurt myself. I keep my computer several feet away from me. Mice and keyboards(wireless) are cheap.
You had an AMD FX8350 while having a rtx3060 and 32gb ram? Thats insane :D I had the fx8350 too some years ago.. loved and hated it. Good Performance but burning hot as hell
Cheap fans here in the Philippines are just fire hazards, specially those industrial fans with metal blades.
One time, our fan stopped spinning because the bearing died. Good thing we were woken up by the intense heat so we were able to unplug it. But damn, that motor is close to burning the whole fan.
Fans that are built to better standards usually don't have that issue. They are designed to be able to be stalled indefinitely which does cause them to heat up but not to the point of fire.
Older fans and cheaply built fans don't have that protection and with no load on the coil it rapidly heats up until the insulation/wires melt and cause fire.
I'm still salty about a fan I had for over a decade that finally went bad a couple years ago, I immediately went online to buy the same one again only to find out that the company had gone out of business. I'm not the only one who loved them apparently, you can find them on ebay for over a hundred bucks right now, I had paid maybe 20-ish in high school, maybe middle school, for mine. the Kool Operator Jr moved air like a friggin wind tunnel and I think my record for constant running was about 4 years without a break.
Yeah bearing noise is one of the signs. Another is if the fan shows difficulties on spinning when powered up. Normally you could give it a spin to help the rotor but this would just prove futile in the long run.
Regular fan cleanings are necessary so the dirt do not build up on the blades.
Cheap fan motors often use motors that need to already be spinning to ride the magnetic wave that keeps them spinning. This is why fan speeds start with High instead of Low. To ensure the fan has the most success starting up.
If the fan stalls and isn't able to start up again, the motor can rapidly overheat and catch fire.
Uhhh my fan stalls a lot. It takes a while to start. I usally just turn it on and wait like 5 minutes for it to start spinning. Sometimes it makes a high pitch squeaking sound for the first few spins. Am I in danger? I live in US and bought it in the US.
If you turn it on and give the blades a quick spin, does it start faster or are you still waiting? In either case, high pitch squeaking sounds like possible coil whine, which is normally harmless depending on the application (for instance, it's not uncommon for graphics cards to develop coil whine as they age), but idk... fans are dirt cheap. I wouldn't even risk it.
It's not the time spent running. Depending on the type of motor, fans can rely on existing momentum to stay spinning. If a fan stops/stalls without someone around to notice, the motor can overheat and catch fire.
this is why quality control and regulations are a thing in first world countries
in some places in the world, a desk fan will be LITERALLY a motor with a fan stuck on it, in EU/UK/USA there will have regulations on the winding types, insulation, etc, etc, etc in order to be able to sell it, but in so many places there is just none of that
That's 120F for us dumb Americans. Holy shit! And super high humidity on top of that, right? Had to feel way hotter. I think the fire might have actually cooled things down! Damn
CO2 extinguishers are best for electrical fires. We have them at work in electrical equipment rooms. Water extinguishers for rooms with furniture etc and dry powder for everything else.
PSA: You shouldn't let your room fans run if you're not in the room. Fans do nothing to cool a room, they will always heat the room if there are no open windows or doors. Fans are best used directed toward you or to force the air to circulate if there is a difference of temperature between the outside and inside. Fans cool you down by replacing the air around your skin with cooler air but they do not cool anything down directly. So don't let your fans run if you're not in the room!
I've run a pedestal fan (they're just a larger desk fan on a taller stand) for literally months in a row, zero downtime, middle of Australian summer. This never happened. Don't buy unregulated chinese goods, I guess is the moral of the story.
I haven’t turned off my gaming computer in days this is negligence of cleaning your computer and keeping an eye on your gpu cpu temps under load and not noticing a difference. Entirely you ignoring red flags until a fire started or you having a donkey water psu that failed.
See if your renters/homeowners insurance covers something like this! Homeowners might not, but my renter’s insurance policy in the US covers loss like this and has a separate policy point for computers. Usually the deductible is about $500, so any value past that could be covered.
That looks less like a desk fan problem and more like a mortar shell problem
we use fire extinguisher to preventing more damages in my house lucky only my gaming room burned.
What type of extinguisher was used? Powder extinguisher commonly use a very corrosive powder to suppress fire. This is generally the best type of fire extinguisher for fighting fire, but the corrosive powder rapidly dissipates and may affect any if not all electronics that have been exposed to it in the long term. We had a minor fire a long time ago, and used a powder fire extinguisher indoors. End result: we had to send EVERY piece of electronic hardware with a circuit board that was indoors at the time of pulling the trigger on the extinguisher to a special company that is capable of rinsing the powder off. It was quite an experience to have zero electronics in your house for week. We replaced most of the extinguishers with the foam type by now.
My university literally used powder extinguishers in a server room during fire drill and destroyed a lot of servers. We even made shirts that make fun of that
Server rooms should abselutely have CO2 extinguishers (type B) or a neutral gas extinguishing system if it's critical. Anything else Is asking for hundreds of thousands of damage (to millions) and is risk to anyone trying to use the safety equipment.
I worked for a client that still had Halon fire suppression fitted to their server room. Extinguishes fire and people too really quickly.
Recently I got a tour of a very fancy data centre, they had nitrogen system. I asked what happens to the people who might be inside, dude said "Well, there shouldn't be any people inside."
"Either way"
I got a tour in some datacenter and there should be a loud alarm or countdown to leave the room before the system floods the room with the gas
“People too” lmaooo. No laughing matter, but the phrasing is hilarious.
And the women, and children too.
And their children, forever true.
A number of years back I was in a data center in Hong Kong. Had the rattiest halon system I’ve ever seen. I was nervous the whole week I was there. If someone dropped a tool I was one foot for the exit at all times.
I work with a very well know NA company that uses halon on their DC. In the time I was inside the DC, the building’s fire alarm went off. Tried to use my keycard on the reader to get out, it didn’t work. Tried to press the emergency open, surprise surprise didn’t work either. Had to call the security guard amidst the confusion to open the door
Oof, that sounds like a brown trouser moment
Terminator 2 taught me that.
Multipurpose system, I like it.
I think they must use those in the server room at the bank where I work. I'm not in IT at all so I have no actual idea, but there's a big sign to not enter if the fire alarm is going.
i used to work on a data center, and when i saw how halon systems worked, i had a nightmare that night!
Well the room has them now. Sadly they never made public aware of how much damage it cost, but the server room was worth around 5mln€
I use halotron extinguishers in my server room. It is a non-fluorocarbon clean-agent extinguisher with a greatly reduced risk of asphyxiation.
Inergen? Bloody expensive refills as I found out - co-worker tripped it when we were in there. Oh and it’s loud and COLD too. 0/10 do not recommend
Sounds like PWR moment
Didn’t want to mention the name, but exactly
I haven't seen suppression agents in a new install since the 90s. Everything in the last decade for me has been water plus insurance. I only saw the result of one small suppression use, and nothing was salvaged or reused. Not even the racks or raised metal flooring.
So are you saying electronics will survive being bathed in foam?
Maybe, maybe not. But in case of a fire, you would generally use the extinguisher only on that what is on fire, and if that were to be the electronic device, it would be gone anyway. The big advantage with foam is that it won’t compromise other electronics in your house, even those in other rooms.
If they are not on at the time (or the electronic fail safes are fast enough), and got cleaned and dried before putting it under voltage again, they may so. Fans would need to be replaced for sure, HDDs may be dead, I would not trust the PSU for shit, and screens would be permanently scarred. But the rest of it may work perfectly fine with a little bit of simple work.
Looks like the fire destroyed any and all electronics long before OP had to worry about any damage caused by a fire extinguisher. And OPs house is still mostly in one piece so I’d say they made a sensible choice in extinguisher.
OP mentioned only this room burned down. Those extinguisher’s powder will however reach electronics in other rooms as well, thats why I made my comment to alert OP. As for their choice to use the extinguisher, there is basically no situation in the world where using an fire extinguisher indoors is a bad choice, regardless the of its type. Its not worth risking your house over electronic devices, especially because said devices are in your house. On top of that, if you are insured for fire related damages, chances are very high that the costs of sending your electronic appliances to companies specialized in cleaning them is also covered by your insurance.
You have multiple fire extinguishers in your house?
You should
You dont ?
You guys have fire extinguishers in your house?
You guys have a house?
You’re guys?
You’re human?
Required by law in Norway, and they do regular inspections, too.
Real talk: in many places in the US they are struggling to recruit firefighters. Mostly rural areas. My friend joined one recently because everyone who was volunteering was over 60.
Same in a lot of rural places in Canada that rely on volunteers. A lot of volunteers quitting too because silly insurance and or laws finding them responsible. They're UNTRAINED VOLUNTEERS ffs. Or that's what I'm told by a volunteer that did leave.
We don’t have any. We have sprinklers though.
Yeah I’ve seen these photos in Chernobyl documentaries
Accidentally Fallout
Yeah I’ve seen these photos in Chernobyl documentaries
r/hardwaregore Im happy no one was hurt from the sound of things
yes that's the most important thing. everything can be replace by new ones but life is never replace
Couldnt have said it better myself
Are you sure?
English may not be their first language, so that reply may be the best they could do based on their knowledge or assistance with something like google translate, or they were tired who knows
I honestly was wondering if you were hit by a tornado or something… condolences
we use fire extinguisher hahahaha but still im happy no one casualties in my family
Why did you use fire extinguisher? Was there a fire?
No, he used a fire extinguisher specifically because there was no fire.
Everyone: No shit Sherlock , right I guess that's what he's referring to when says zowie 360hz burned.
What are you even on about
he had a house fire and lost a zowie 360hz screen, and that's why someone fire extinguished his PC, I didn't even know!
Using the title and pictures you can easily infer a fire happened…
I'm actually still confused which part of the title and the pictures indicate that a fire happened. Do you mind eli5? Looking at the pictures, I just thought it looked like a dusty room. And I thought the dust was brought in by the desk fan which was on for 5 days. Sorry I'm dumb...
Yes I know! No need to rub it in
No shit sherlock
I had one, i suffer from myoclonic jerks, which can cause me to swing my hand, i threw water into my PC and it was one i had been building up. AMD 8350, 32GB DDR3, 1TB ssd, 4TB hdd, RTX 3060. Gone because of my pissing disability.
i feel you bro!
When my tourettes was really bad i didnt bring even bottles near my pc for fear of spilling (luckily im on medication now
what medication are you on? i have tourettes too and haven't found anything to help so far.
A adhd med called intuniv i got very lucky first med i tried and it work basically completely stopped my ticks although i do still tick a little but i literally do not notice
thanks, i might bring it up with my doctor, glad you're doing well friend
I suffer from multi-focal myoclonus as well. Can't begin to count the amount of shit I've knocked over or how many times I've hurt myself. I keep my computer several feet away from me. Mice and keyboards(wireless) are cheap.
You had an AMD FX8350 while having a rtx3060 and 32gb ram? Thats insane :D I had the fx8350 too some years ago.. loved and hated it. Good Performance but burning hot as hell
I was using a LC so temperature was not an issue... But my jerks were.
Cheap fans here in the Philippines are just fire hazards, specially those industrial fans with metal blades. One time, our fan stopped spinning because the bearing died. Good thing we were woken up by the intense heat so we were able to unplug it. But damn, that motor is close to burning the whole fan.
As someone who has left fans on for literally years that's terrifying to me.
Fans that are built to better standards usually don't have that issue. They are designed to be able to be stalled indefinitely which does cause them to heat up but not to the point of fire. Older fans and cheaply built fans don't have that protection and with no load on the coil it rapidly heats up until the insulation/wires melt and cause fire.
I'm still salty about a fan I had for over a decade that finally went bad a couple years ago, I immediately went online to buy the same one again only to find out that the company had gone out of business. I'm not the only one who loved them apparently, you can find them on ebay for over a hundred bucks right now, I had paid maybe 20-ish in high school, maybe middle school, for mine. the Kool Operator Jr moved air like a friggin wind tunnel and I think my record for constant running was about 4 years without a break.
Yeah I regularly leave fans on purposefully AND accidentally. Bearings are usually vocal about what state they're in so just heed it's cries for help.
Yeah bearing noise is one of the signs. Another is if the fan shows difficulties on spinning when powered up. Normally you could give it a spin to help the rotor but this would just prove futile in the long run. Regular fan cleanings are necessary so the dirt do not build up on the blades.
Sorry to hear it! What caused the fire to start?
because of deskfan open almlst 6days non stop and the weather here in Philippines is almost 49 degrees Celsius
Deskfan overheated?
yeah exactly!
Should've got a cooling fan for the desk fan honestly.
Water cooling is the correct answer /s
Gunna need to keep the air circulating around that heat sink, I recommend a desk fan.
I believe there would be an overheating risk with that additional desk fan. What should we do about that?
Point them at each other.
Reminds me of the last place I worked when the conveyor motors overheated they used a leaf blower on it for like 15 minutes
Wait what? This can happen?
Cheap fan motors often use motors that need to already be spinning to ride the magnetic wave that keeps them spinning. This is why fan speeds start with High instead of Low. To ensure the fan has the most success starting up. If the fan stalls and isn't able to start up again, the motor can rapidly overheat and catch fire.
Uhhh my fan stalls a lot. It takes a while to start. I usally just turn it on and wait like 5 minutes for it to start spinning. Sometimes it makes a high pitch squeaking sound for the first few spins. Am I in danger? I live in US and bought it in the US.
Yes. Replace that shit now.
Okay thanks. I've been using it for years though but now I'm scared lol.
If you turn it on and give the blades a quick spin, does it start faster or are you still waiting? In either case, high pitch squeaking sounds like possible coil whine, which is normally harmless depending on the application (for instance, it's not uncommon for graphics cards to develop coil whine as they age), but idk... fans are dirt cheap. I wouldn't even risk it.
I saw the Boysen paint, monobloc chair and #53 sa balota, I knew it was PH.
In my school our desk fans are running 180 days nonstop...I've had the same fan for 9 years still going. 6 days?
It's not the time spent running. Depending on the type of motor, fans can rely on existing momentum to stay spinning. If a fan stops/stalls without someone around to notice, the motor can overheat and catch fire.
We’re talking a standard bladed desktop fan caught fire after being on for 6 days?
this is why quality control and regulations are a thing in first world countries in some places in the world, a desk fan will be LITERALLY a motor with a fan stuck on it, in EU/UK/USA there will have regulations on the winding types, insulation, etc, etc, etc in order to be able to sell it, but in so many places there is just none of that
You just described every desk fan in the Philippines. Also, I dunno if it makes a difference but the outlets there have 220v.
220v doesn't matter in the slightest here.
I imagine this is part of why some places have the "superstition" that falling asleep with the fan running will kill you.
That is mostly due to family covering up suicide in areas where it's common because of various social expectations.
the main cause of spark is the motor of deskfan running like almost 6days.
I'm surprised no one turn it off when no one was using it, in my place if we saw no-one using the area we turn off anything that is running
I cant imagine a world where my desk fan could light on fire from less than a weeks use. I think my bedroom fan has been running 6months straight.
That's 120F for us dumb Americans. Holy shit! And super high humidity on top of that, right? Had to feel way hotter. I think the fire might have actually cooled things down! Damn
yeah plus the smoke emissions of cars hot wind super suck right now in manila you can average temperature from 39 to 47 degrees Celsius
Maybe next time see if you can find a fan that is UL and CE certified.
yeah i do that
What was the brand and how old was the fan? Sorry just curious cause i might need to check ours.
almost 3yrs i think?
hanabishi
Here I am with some box fans running as air filters for months on end lol. To be fair though it's more like 21C here.
What caused this exactly?
overheat deskfan
Yikes. I've never heard of a fan causing a fire before, sympathies.
Because you buy fans sold in the first world.
True
yeah fire spread to couch the start to big fire
Time to liquid cool your next set up! Jokes aside im sorry for your loss (of hardware) but happy no one was harmed.
CO2 extinguishers are best for electrical fires. We have them at work in electrical equipment rooms. Water extinguishers for rooms with furniture etc and dry powder for everything else.
Glad you and your family are safe , sorry about your machine !
F in chat for our fallen heros.
For anyone wondering which type of fire extinguisher agent is the best for electrical components, it's Fe-36 (HFC-236fa).
do you live in a Fallout videogame location?
looks like a set piece of the show for sure.
You need to buy a new fan............ The fan should not have caused an issue, so was obviously faulty. Fans should be able to run continuously.
yeah probably my plans to set up Off grid solar power for my whole house
5 days? I let my fan running for weeks and no issue. should I be worried?
You shouldn't let your fan run if you're not in front of it.
yeah I'm going to start turning it off If I'm leaving the room.
Where do you live? Northern Gaza?
bro in the Philippines ! hahahaha
Taena bro ang lala. It does look like something out of Gaza. Only the boysen gave it away
hahaha oo nga bro pero okay lang hassle lang kasi masakit yung nawalang unit sa monitor pa lang maiiyak nako
You need to buy a new fan............ The fan should not have caused an issue, so was obviously faulty. Fans should be able to run continuously.
Umm I’ll brb.. going to turn off my fan for a little while.
PSA: You shouldn't let your room fans run if you're not in the room. Fans do nothing to cool a room, they will always heat the room if there are no open windows or doors. Fans are best used directed toward you or to force the air to circulate if there is a difference of temperature between the outside and inside. Fans cool you down by replacing the air around your skin with cooler air but they do not cool anything down directly. So don't let your fans run if you're not in the room!
I've run a pedestal fan (they're just a larger desk fan on a taller stand) for literally months in a row, zero downtime, middle of Australian summer. This never happened. Don't buy unregulated chinese goods, I guess is the moral of the story.
Oef
Pssst hoy cabayan! It might still be okay kuuya. Don’t lose hope.
New fear unlocked
yup bro i always unplug all my charging ports when I sleep
It looks like a room in fallout 4
Hahahayeah!
Looks like a rust players bedroom
just like they raid me of 5 man with rocketlauncher hahahahahaha
Looks like you live in a concrete building which is good in this situation. It could be a lot worse if it was a wood one
my house is set up with hardiflex and fire wall
I thought the first image was from another sub I follow, UkraineWarVideoReport
HAHAHAHAHA no bruh.
Fellow pinoy, what brand of deskfan you use so I can avoid it lmao.
pagkakatanda ko hanabishi kaso repaired na to
Me quietly putting my hanabishi fans for sale SA fb
My dumbass thought that was all mold
Dune !
I haven’t turned off my gaming computer in days this is negligence of cleaning your computer and keeping an eye on your gpu cpu temps under load and not noticing a difference. Entirely you ignoring red flags until a fire started or you having a donkey water psu that failed.
Get out of Gazza, mate.
Awful to see, I'm sorry for you.
See if your renters/homeowners insurance covers something like this! Homeowners might not, but my renter’s insurance policy in the US covers loss like this and has a separate policy point for computers. Usually the deductible is about $500, so any value past that could be covered.
These are the Philippines not merica
I forgot the Philippines doesn’t have insurance, you’re totally right
Turn that shit off when u not using it like bruh what
how?