Fire protection

2Brooktrout

I have an off grid system for my fairly remote cabin and I installed the electrical equipment and batteries in the basement for theft and weather protection from the cold. The batteries are in a ventilated fire resistant box and the inverter and charge controller are mounted on a factory mounting plate on cement board, on the wall. Cement board is also installed above the system. Looking at it now, I wonder what the potential for a fire would be when I am not there. The system powers a refrigerator all the time. The CC and Inverter are wired to a MMP panel with the appropriate breakers but would that kill the system in case of a fire? Should Imover everything to a remote location/ 

Dave Angelini

Sounds reasonable what you have done, maybe explain it differently. Usually for wildfire you need a minimum 100 feet of defensible space around the structure. Where is the cabin? Do you think that fire people would protect it if you were not there? At some point the cost of doing nothing, against what it would cost to protect it, or harden it, or move it comes into play. You have to crunch the numbers.

For instance, where we live the fire people tell us to leave and I tell them as soon as you send an engine I will consider leaving. They never send an engine and we never leave. This has happened 5 times in the last 20 years. Much easier to stay since it is our home. The fire guys love us also ! Not quite as much as we love them !!!

Unattended offgrid is the hardest to do. Spray foam protection, sprinklers, and the need of power in smokey weather where solar can lose 50% of it power.  YUK     Good Luck

BB.

Do you have a water tank for fresh/fire water (some regions have minimum tank/pumping requirements--You know--Like California).

Is the tank accessible for fire crews to draw/pump?

I think a few people have installed Grundos SQ-Flex pumps in their tanks. That they can take DC (something like 48VDC 300 VDC), or anything from 120 to 240 VAC--Means you can power from battery bank, or AC inverter (~1,000 Watts minimum) to 120/240 VAC gensets--Very versatile.

https://www.solar-electric.com/grundfos-sqflex-25-sqf-3-solar-pump.html

Good for a redundant/automated fire system (run sprinklers on roof/sides of building...

Or, for manual pumping, a good quality water pump is cheap (just keep 10-20 gallons of gas up there with preservative, change once per year):

https://powerequipment.honda.com/pumps

I have stored a couple Honda eu2000i gensets for 10 years +/-, just drained of gas, a squirt of oil in the spark plug hole... Fill with gas when needed, and a 1/2 dozen pulls (get fuel to carburetor), and away it goes.

Lots of options out there (the above are certainly not the "cheap" solutions).

-Bill "certainly no expert on this stuff" B.

Dave Angelini

Bill, are U in the yellow I hope? I was down in the valley for an hour and the AQI was close to 250. Back up near Yosemite we are fine. How are U ?  I really see the irony of " a smoke plume has been detected in your area "
 Changing the cabin filter weekly these days.....Stay safe!  The C19 is a wash at this point with Fire.

BB.

Dave,

We have been pretty lucky so far... One night, had to close the windows because I was starting to choke a little bit on the smoke. And yesterday, kept the windows closed because of the smell of smoke (probably a couple miles of visibility do to smoke/haze).

But for the most part, we have been in a pretty good air quality pocket. East towards the SF Bay, more smoke. And sometimes in our hills smoke in the inversion layer).

No A/C, so we do put a couple of box fans in the windows to cool off/ventilate when outside is nice. Did hit 85-100F last few days--Not usual for us.

Put a class 10 air filter in the central heat--And circulate the air with that--Has done a pretty good job of keeping the house air smoke free.

Use this live data link and plug in San Mateo California (for me):

https://aqicn.org/here/

Don't know that I can completely trust the data... It seems that the "flag" data does not match the historical data (some sites high, some sites low--No decipherable pattern).

We lost utilty power for about 7 hours (something like 3 am to noon) and pulled out the old Honda eu2000i to keep the fridge and freezer cold until power was restored (got to drain the fuel ("pickle") later today for next time).

Pandemic, economic collapse, power outages, and (dry lightning caused) fires. Waiting for Tidal Wave, Earthquake, and Locust next.

-Bill

Dave Angelini

Sounds like you are doing well. Nice link ! 

  Better add to your list at the end, a Chernobyl type event. If you want more on that, the 2019 HBO 6 hour series is decent.
Nice and scarry    https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Chernobyl/81104907