Battery Charging

[David T]

This past weekend there was a fire in an attached garage. From the initial reports it seems the owner was charging the battery on his motor cycle. It is not clear if it was a battery tender type or a large charger and if it was installed over a long period of time or just to fast charge the motorcycle to go for a ride. In any case, when the fire was discovered he attempted to put it out himself. By the time the Fire Department was called and arrived the whole garage and the cars were destroyed and a significant portion of the main house was damaged. The fire went to 3 alarms and many surrounding towns were called to assist. The moral here is to ALWAYS be careful with things electrical. If you are not sure what you are doing you should stop and get enough information so you can do things safely. No hobby is worth getting hurt or endangering your house. If I can get any further details I will pass them along. In the meantime be very careful when charging batteries and never leave a charger unattended for long periods of time.
David Teitelbaum

[Exolis]

Not sure if those Battery tenders are Constant Current or Constant Voltage, but anything thats C.C. is prone to blowing up a battery(acid spewing out). Could of easily been faulty Charger, something falling and shorting the battery, acid spewing and started a reaction with something else, or just bad wiring.

[David T]

Any charger can fail. It may also be a case of charging a battery that had frozen or maybe he was charging a small motorcycle battery with way too big a charger on too high a setting. Or he had the wires crossed. Another possibility is the charger he was using was a cheap piece of Chinese cr-p. Many of the electrical appliances made in China are NOT UL tested and approved. I will try to see if I can get any other information to narrow down the cause.
David Teitelbaum

[Dangermouse]

That happened to a neighbor of mine one night.

He had an older 3 series that he was trying to sell. Battery was dead and the car was parked in the driveway, so he connected the charger and went into the house to watch the game. The car was well on fire by the time a neighbor noticed and phoned 911. Had it been in the garage, there is no doubt that it could have caught it on fire.