Several months ago, it started dawning on me that I had a number of flammable liquids in the basement, and needed to do something about it.
I’ve had a few boxes of spray paint cans, and some small cans of solvents and glue. Recently, because of the 3D resin printing, I’ve had a lot of isopropyl alcohol. And I’d realized this mess needs containment.
The best ideas I’ve come up with are to a) get it all out in the garage, and bring down cans as needed; or b) get a cabinet intended to store it, and put all the flammable stuff in it.
These cabinets are really expensive. And nowadays, shipping costs have gone crazy! But I felt compelled to get one. I spent a lot of time looking for a new cabinet, and was also looking for a find at a used equipment place. No dice.
Thank God, a local resident was selling one on Ebay for local pickup. Big unit, unused, but rusty in some places. But the interior was pristine, and the price was good. And shipping was free, other than the $50 I paid him to truck it to my house.
Here’s the cabinet, now installed in my basement.
I’ve learned that the point of these cabinets are not to contain explosions, but to thermally isolate the contents for a sufficient amount of time to escape the fire scene – like, 30 minutes.
Not ideal! But I feel better having this in place now.
The ideal would be to store flammable liquids way outside the house, and not be a potential contributor to any fire in the house. But I figure, if the basement is that engulfed, the house is gone either way.
I recognize this might be a… trying not to say incendiary or flammable… ok, touchy subject. But it’s been weighing on my mind, and made me spend some money and take some action.
I’m interested in hearing about how others handle this issue, whether by storing at distance, or with containment, or minimizing, or going completely non-flammable, or some other approach.
Cliff