Prius's spontaneously catching on fire?

i don't consider treating people who come here to report a fire, and provide no proof to be knee jerk. the burden is on them. but we can agree to disagree. i'm not saying it can't happen, but i'm not saying it did.

 

The only other time we heard about a PiP on fire was during Hurricane Sandy some of the new ones arriving on the dock in NJ got salt water flooded. Evidently some of the regular hybrid Prii soaked also smoldered. Bunch a Fiskar Karmas went up in smoke too, that was actually the bigger story, but the side story was a few Prii also .

 

First post ever. Hmm...
Would you please post more pictures of the damage, from other sides and angles?
Did the FD determine a cause? It may have been arson, because it burned heavily in the engine compartment, took out all the seats, completely burned the back door but only partially burned the front door. The most combustible components, the gas tank and battery, are in the rear but it is the engine compartment in the front that sustained most of the damage.

 

Etc had a great point about the smoke detectors. I have 2 in the garage one a co detector and one regular smoke and detectors throughout the house.
Apparently the op had none which is foolish.

Every house fire in the news around here the fire dept always says they didn't have smoke detectors.

There's a few simple things you can do that may save your house or life too

When I come home for the day I do not roll into the garage. Never. I let the car sit outside and cool off. Parking a super hot car in the garage is asking for disaster. You may never know if you have a stuck brake caliper for instance.
And the rotor is red hot. You park it in the garage and tire catches on fire.
Most car fires on the road are stuck calipers they keep driving till the tire catches on fire. I had one in my life in a Crown Vic felt it pulling and knew what it was and by the time I could pull over the tire was smoking.

Lastly Before nitey night walk the perimter of your home.I go Into backyard and observe. I poke my head in the garage for lights and smells and sounds. I go out front and observe. The older you are the more forgetful u become the more imporant this is.
Takes one minute. Do door lock roundup. Like etc says the op fire probably smoked for quite a while before igniting and a lights out perimeter walk would have found it.

 

When we moved into our place, over 25 years back, gradually got wind of an undisclosed fire that had happened in the attached garage. There was some papers attached to the fuse box I think. And then started noticing stuff, charring on the hatch to the garage attic, etcetera. I gather insurance had been used to refurb everything.

It was a car fire. The son of the previous owners actually dropped by last summer, while we were out in the yard. He was just a kid around 10 when we bought the house, lol. He confirmed: something electrical in a car had been recently repaired, or causing problems.

 

Back before the days of disclosure forms, I bet. At least in the US. 30+ years ago I walked away from one house for sale after I looked in the attic and saw charred ends of repaired rafters. The seller said, "Oh yeah, there was lightning strike." Caveat emptor.

 

When I became a homeowner, smoke etectors in the garage were actually discouraged, probably something related to false alarms. The fire rating of the wall and door were supposed to protect the home occupants long enough to escape.

I put one in anyway when a serial arsonist was on the loose in the region, who preferred carports / garages / woodpiles. It took nearly a year, 50-ish fires, and a fatality before he was caught.

While that location is the most prone to non-cooking false alarms and low battery chirps, I've maintained one there ever since.

 

I should maybe put one in our garage. Ours aren't wired to any central alarm though. Not sure what I'd do; need something with the sound maker in the house and detector in the garage.

 

Our alarms are not centrally connected either, but that is no reason to not do it.

Our house was built when the old code required only a single detector in the hallway near the bedrooms. Code didn't require connected units in each sleeping space until a few years later. So I simply put a loose one on a bookself in the bedroom, and a couple others (not mounted, but all high up on furniture) at far ends of the house, including just inside from the garage. I tend to be a light sleeper, likely to eventually hear a garage alarm, and will definitely hear the inside unit nearest the garage when the fire breaks through the door. Not perfect, doesn't meet newer codes, but still a significant improvement over the original arrangement, at very low cost.

Original count: 1 in hallway, 120V
Today's count: 5 (4 in living space, 1 in garage). Not wired together, all new locations are battery only.

 

120 V detectors have a third wire to sound all the alarms if one detects combustion. The heads are cheap, around US$15 each, but you'd have to run 3-wires in an approved wiring method between them, and connect to a dedicated breaker, and that can be expensive.

Conversely, you can spend the big money on a central alarm panel (with offsite monitoring or not), then use cheap low voltage (power-limited) wiring between it and your sensors. Both types of system are prone to false alarms and continued maintenance costs.

There may be, or soon may be, an affordable system that uses household wifi, at least for non-required applications.

 

I'm thinking get a regular detector, open it up, cut and extend the speaker wires to an external speaker inside the house.

 

i'll probably never do anything. that's pretty much how i roll. if you don't see me around for awhile, you'll know what happened.

 

There are some smoke alarms that can sound them all when one detects smoke. This was just the first one I found quickly.

 

Thanks. A little steeper up here:



I can see myself slipsliding into bisco mode.

 

Sorry. I originally started searching amazon.ca but checked back & saw bisco's post.
One bisco is quite enough, thank you!

I thought there were some less expensive detectors with a similar feature, though.

 

Yeah the redneck solution is to get the $15 one, mounted in garage, but open it up, find wires going to the speaker, run it to similar (or same?) speaker located inside the house.

Really cheap solution: maybe it's loud enough that the sounds penetrates the walls. Maybe test that first.

 

our bedroom backs up to the garage. i make my wife sleep on that side. she'll warn me.

 

That sounds like a good tinkering project, and might work if the distance isn't too great (a few meters).

 

I put a CO2 out there over the car because I walked away from the car once while it was still on right after I bought. Didn't do that again but its pretty easy when its brand new to you. Although you may not die if a G2 runs all night in the garage I don't want to find out.

Smoke detectors are cheap and don't false alarm like they used to. Only people who die in house fires are the people who have no smoke detectors. One is really loud but 2 going off no one could sleep through that. I believe if the OP had my setup a Co2 and a smoke in the garage he would have had minimum damage to the house. If they had not had a dog they would have died.

Its a shame that the Prius fires we have seen burned the car to the ground and unable to reveal a definitive area where it started. Like if they caught it early. Sure not epidemic though.

 

Do you mean CO, not CO2? I have two of the former, but have never seen any of the later on the shelf at local hardware stores.

Not exactly true:
Research raises concerns over smoke detectors' effectiveness in waking children
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130627131827.htm

Kids can sleep through smoke alarms, experts say - TODAY.com

One response has been customizable alarms for parents to record their own voice to wake the children.

Sleep has several stages, which cycle repeatedly through the night. I believe more research is needed into what it takes to rouse some people from the very deepest stages.