Insurance Inspector Coming !!

Only if there's some sort of wick, or it's turned into a fine mist (perhaps by running it through a spray bottle) somehow. As a puddle of oil, it's only slightly more of a fire risk than water.

I'd expect it to burn just about as well as lamp oil - namely, with great difficulty in getting it ignited (unless some sort of wick or atomizing method is used) and even more difficulty sustaining a flame.

(Of course, someone dropping a rag into a puddle of the stuff would constitute a first-class wick...)

That would be the about only real reason to be concerned about it that I can think up. Otherwise, the stuff is, as Al said, "pretty much inert", at least in terms of fire hazard. Physical/chemical hazard is another question entirely - one that I haven't got a clue about. I imagine dropping concentrated chlorine into it would be a bad thing, as would letting it come in contact with other strong oxidizers, and of course, there's the classic "banana peel" scenario that a puddle of it on the floor could cause.

Albany Georgia, about 1996, the shiney new Lowes (Open for less than 8 months, if I remember things right) burned to the ground. Cause was later determined from witness testimony to be a customer managing to somehow combine pool chlorine from one side of the store with paint thinner on the other side of the store. Resulting mix went up more or less like napalm, taking the entire store with it. And I do mean the

*ENTIRE* store - The only thing left standing when the smoke cleared was a 20-ish foot long section of concrete block wall, and that was so warped out of shape that it could barely be called "standing". Either item by itself was a non-issue - Put em together, and you've got a multi-million dollar fire and a "Closed until we rebuild" sign in the parking lot...

Oil on rags laying around is a problem with spontaious combustion.Tell them you do not want that

Nah, he's already decided to deny any claims, so he didn't need to look much....

like a mist feed coolant system?

Wouldn't a modern store like Lowes have a sprinkler system to prevent the building from burning to the ground?

I noticed around here that Home Depot even has sprinklers in the shelving units in the paint department.

Brian Elfert

After eading this i found clorox next to a coffe can of kero..I did not move it far yet

I ment to say reading cannot get warm toes are cold i am setting next to the torpedo heater toast on one side froze on the other

They had sprinklers. Clearly visible. Whether they were operational, or even had a chance to activate, is another question altogether.

From witness testimony, it sounds like essentially what happened was a fireball erupted in the paint department, and damn near the whole place was on fire within minutes. By the time I managed to navigate the 6-8 blocks from my home to a clear vantage point of what was burning (took all of about 5 minutes from the time I heard the series of explosions and noticed the smoke plume) the entire store was a mass of flames that I could feel the heat from on my face from roughly half a mile away, and chunks of burned foam and similar material the size of basketballs were starting to rain down in the downwind area. My home was in the "fallout pattern", and it took me literally DAYS to get all of that crap cleaned out of the landlord's swimming pool. It drifted around the area like weird black snow for weeks afterwards, reeking of "burnt" and leaving streaks of soot on everything it came in contact with. Not certain exactly what it was, but I suspect probably quite a bit of stacked styrofoam or similar insulation board was the source.

I've never heard whether anyone died in that fire, though I expect that if anyone had, it would have been front-page news in the local fish-wrap. Not a peep on that score, despite some heavy coverage of the fire itself during the following days, so I can only assume everyone who was inside somehow made it out OK.

And I am sitting at my desk, wearing just a pair of shorts, with the eggnishner going flat out to cool the house down. Was 97F outside with 80% humidity today (most unusual as we normally get dry heat this time of year), Very comfortable 22C//72F inside now. Alan in beautiful Golden Bay, Western Oz, South 32.25.42, East 115.45.44 GMT+8 VK6 YAB ICQ 6581610 to reply, change oz to au in address