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Battery safety - what does/should your club do?

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I was wondering - what procedures do club committees have in place to deal with battery fires?

I gather many clubs take what I have heard referred to as the "Ostrich approach", which basically involves ignoring the whole issue at club level in the hopes that individual drivers have taken their own precautions, and that these are adequate.

Others take a more proactive approach, doing things like including evacuation procedures in the drivers' briefing if the venue is indoors, specifying safe battery charging practices and areas in the club rules, having a dedicated "fire marshal" on hand equipped with fireproof gauntlets and a large container of sand or vermiculite for when cars crash and burn, etc.

I would be interested to read your views. If you race with a proactive club, what do they do? If you don't, what do you think they should do?

Please discuss...

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We are a rather small club (most often less than 10 drivers) but we have some safety measures that we apply:

- Everyone must balance charge their Lipo's

- The use of a Lipo charge bag is mandatory (we have a couple to lend out to people if they don't have one)

- We have a fire blanket at hand

- Once in a while we have a little training about what to do when a Lipo or a car catches on fire

One of our members recently had a Lipo explode in his kitchen (it was not charging, it just spontaneously combusted), nearly burning down his entire kitchen and living room. Needless to say, we're all even more careful after that...

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We are a rather small club (most often less than 10 drivers) but we have some safety measures that we apply:

- Everyone must balance charge their Lipo's

- The use of a Lipo charge bag is mandatory (we have a couple to lend out to people if they don't have one)

- We have a fire blanket at hand

- Once in a while we have a little training about what to do when a Lipo or a car catches on fire

One of our members recently had a Lipo explode in his kitchen (it was not charging, it just spontaneously combusted), nearly burning down his entire kitchen and living room. Needless to say, we're all even more careful after that...

"Nobbi1977 looks sheepish and starts looking up ammo tins on EBay"

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My club states that only hardcase square lipos can be used on track. A charge sack/bunker is mandatory, as is balance charging. And all users must have their own small portable fire extinguisher (goes without saying these days, especially at home !!) even though they have extinguishers at the track.

At home I charge my lipo's in my kitchen at the end where the door is approx 2 feet away and half open. Fire extinguisher at the fridge beside the inside door and lipo inside a charge bag and turnigy charge bunker. And I make sure I am right there all the time during charging, or at worst next door in the living room.

My son is 20 months old and I take no risks what so ever. In fact during a recent test run with my DB01R I had a slight side impact that chipped the hardcase of the lipo pack. Needless to say that I got rid of it (in a proper manor) and bought a new one. Take no risk.

James

:)

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The club I race at stipulates charging in a safety sack and we race outdoors so there is little danger of a fire spreading.

One thing I would expect to see is a rule stipulating charging at 1C rate only as the majority of battery fires are down to overcharging. This is by people believing that just because a charger can charge at 10 amps it must be OK to shove that into a 4000mah battery to charge it quicker.

I wrote an explanation in another thread but who charges their phone in a bunker? No one and they have have had Lithium battery tech since 1999 (I had a lipo battery in my Ericsson T28s) and fires are rare, most of the time being down to faulty charging regulating circuitry in the phone.

Education is the key here as there is no circuitry to nanny you and regulate the charging rate (like a phone) it means that either down to ignorance of battery chemistry and acceptable charge rates or just pure stupidity (pushing the boundaries) accidents will happen.

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The 1C rate is a good rule. I'd sooner buy an extra battery than try and charge at a higher rate. But I do want to point out that the accident our club member had, was neither due to ignorance or stupidity. He is a close friend of mine and I know he never charges his batteries att more than 1C. The explosion happened a couple of hours after the battery had been charged and there had been no irregularities during charging. Sometimes things just go wrong, I guess...

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One of our members recently had a Lipo explode in his kitchen (it was not charging, it just spontaneously combusted), nearly burning down his entire kitchen and living room.

Any idea why it went up? There has to be a reason, just putting down to 'spontaneous combustion' doesn't sound very thorough.

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Any idea why it went up? There has to be a reason, just putting down to 'spontaneous combustion' doesn't sound very thorough.

Can it be down to "reason unknown", probably? I remember a load of Dell laptop batteries exploding with no reason, it was in the news, although there could have been valid reasons for that?

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Reasons unknown, indeed. The insurance company checked out what was left of the battery and couldn't figure out what went wrong either. Now I'm not saying that there can't have been any accidental overcharging, though my friend uses an Orion charger that is less than a year old and he always balances the batteries too. The battery itself wasn't old either and it was a hardcase lipo, so not accidental puncturing or whatever could have happened. What baffles me most is that the thing must have started burning several hours after it had been charged and ballanced...

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What make was the hard case lipo? Was it ever used near water?

I charge mine in the conservatory on a tiled floor and remain close by while charging. I find it really intriguing when batteries go up. I charge at 1C, or auto on my charger which can put upto 5A into a 4A battery but this rate alters in auto mode, I also balance charge always and have a lipo sack which I don't always use but I do store them in the sack when not in use and keep them out of extreme heat or direct sunlight.

All of mine are hard case which i thought were far safer and less likely to be an issue, however water damage concerns me as I use mine in my bashers albeit not in salt water, it still gets run through puddles and the like. I use HPI and Core RC hard case. Would love to know if your friends was a budget lipo or not and what rating it was, also are we talking 2s or higher?

Cheers

Nito

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Hard case are not inherently safer. They are just more puncture resistant. As has already been stated most fires are due to over charging, not puncturing. Even in planes when they crash puncture fires are rare and hard cases are never used. The biggest issue with hard case packs is that they do not allow the cells to swell so if there is a problem, say, when charging the internal pressure will increase much more rapidly and to a higher level. Perhaps enough to cause explosion where a non enclosed cell would simply balloon.

Of course I'm not saying hard case batteries shouldn't be used. But nobody should believe that because they are hard cased they are less vulnerable to misuse or bad luck.

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