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Notes -
Had a fire in my apartment early yesterday morning - bathroom fan burned out and ignited a bunch of trapped lint. Saw it very quickly after it started, thanks flu making it hard to sleep. Didn't remember we had a fire extinguisher until girlfriend called 911. Extinguisher put it out quickly, thankfully the only flammable stuff that was touched was the bath mat and not the very full trash can. Burned my hand and foot, thankfully not too heavily. Girlfriend and cats are completely fine. Currently staying at a hotel, gonna crash with a local friend once we check out tomorrow.
If our management hadn't sent out an email the other week reminding us that it's almost time for the yearly fire extinguisher inspection, I might not have remembered we had one. As it is, I only made the association when GF said she'd call 911. There's a whole lot of little things that have lined up recently that by some factor have contributed to saving our lives. It is a miracle to me that the only casualties in this situation are my bath mat, a bunch of my stuff being covered in soot, and blisters on my hand and foot.
If anyone has any advice on how to de-soot linens and stuff, or anything else I should know about...just processing a near-miss like this. I'd appreciate it.
Double-check where your nearest fire extinguisher is. Make a mental note.
Also: If it's far away, just buy one. I'm renting an apartment, and the nearest fire extinguisher is (or at least was) the entire apartment length and half the building's hallway away from me. Now there's one about 3/4 of the apartment length away in the worst case.
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Jesus, glad you got lucky. Is your bathroom fan on a timer that runs for hours a day? That was code for my place, but disabled it right away.
Having a washer and dryer in the house rather than a shed sounds like a lot of trouble. I'd never even thought about dealing with lint in an interior.
It is not, we just tend to run it a lot cause GF and I tend to nuke the bathroom. Plus the white noise helps me sleep, usually.
To be clear, the bathroom fan is on a different duct than our dryer - there was just so much dust buildup/clumping on the fan intake that it was basically the consistency of lint. Sorry if that was confusing. I've had a washer/dryer combo in every place I've lived in and never had much trouble beyond the dryer not drying effectively. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Glad it mostly worked out fine.
The lack of a proper place to mount extinguishers is a major flaw in the residential building code, IMO. Like the IBC spent the last three revisions updating the spacing of outlets on a kitchen island, but there's no standard place to mount an extinguisher.
For those who are not renting, I highly recommend just buying a vent cleaning kit. Online or at the home center. Apparently you are supposed to clean your dryer vent every year, and if you already own a drill and vacuum, a cleaning kit is less than the cost of calling a chimney sweep out. Once you're set up, the additional time per vent is pretty small.
Oof, that's annoying. Especially doesn't help that mine is mounted under the kitchen sink, which is a great way to rarely see or think about it.
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I'd recommend it even if renting: bathroom fans in particular are pretty prone to get clogged with random junk. And even without a fire, the reduced airflow from lint can be enough to promote mold in bathrooms if you take showers often. Landlord should take care of it between renters, but there's a lot of space between should and did.
Even hand-cleaning with a wire-brush-on-a-stick is pretty effective. Just be sure to hit the inlet at the drier, the outlet where it exhausts, and then run an empty no-heat cycle on the drier for a couple minutes -- a lot of people clean out the side nearest the drier heavily, and then get surprised that the outlet gets clogged.
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