Lipo Warning

[Stephen Grigg]

The club chairman informed me today of a catastrophic event to another elderly glider member.He apparently left a Lipo on charge all night!!!!!! the end result is his house burnt down to a cinder.He has lost his  memorabilia,memories models everything.I only charge my lipos when im in attendace with a quality charger that bleeps loadly when the lipo is charged

Edited By Stephen Grigg on 08/06/2010 23:12:54

[Paddy Fidling]

Ouch! Gotta feel bad for the guy, Hope he and any other occupants got out the house safetly.

 

Just goes to show the dangers of Li-Pos!

 

Paddy

[Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage]

Oh thats terrible,

Perhaps a good time to invest in a lipo safe :s Well obviously not for the poor guy. Maybe it isn't a good idea for my granddad to have lipos"sorry granddad, it's back to the Nicads for you! Lipos are too dangerous!"Would his home insurance pay for this?

 

 

Edited By Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage on 08/06/2010 23:17:57

[Stephen Grigg]

Hope so for his sake,he is worried that he only has £50000,contents cover,My contents cover isnt that high

[Doug Ireland]

Damn, that's hard luck! Hopefully his insurance company will see it for what it was (accident and not negligence) and pay-up.

 

Just one more reason why I won't keep the two LiPo's I have in the house!

[Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage]

Almost an excuse for going glow! You have a few more flammable liquids, but the batteries are not as volatile!

Edited By Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage on 09/06/2010 00:55:07

[David Davis]

I think my charger stops charging once the batteries are full but I'm not sure as I find the technicalities associated with electric flight to be a crushing bore!

 

To be on the safe side I charge my LiPos on the concrete floor of my shed.

[Tim Mackey]

He broke the absolute cardinal rule of dealing with Lipos.

NEVER CHARGE UNATTENDED.

Very sorry to hear of his incident.

[Stephen Grigg]

100% right Timbo

[Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage]

Maybe you could bring out the opposite of not being able to buy alcohol till your 18, not being able to buy lipo's after the age of 70! (Or you have to participate in a safety course!)

[Tim Mackey]

As mentioned by DD, pretty well all proper Lithium compatible chargers should terminate the charge as soon as the pack is full.

I for one would be interested to know a bit more about the circumstances here - we already know he left them un-attended, but what charger was he using, and was he balance charging etc?

The reason that balance charging is a good idea EVERY TIME, is because smart chargers will monitor the individual voltage of all cells, and terminate the charge should one or more cellls show abnormal data.

Of course, I am not advocating this is completely foolproof, as any equipment can fail at any time for many reasons, but this extra dimension can only be a good thing IMO.

As stressed before, all charging of lithium chemistry should be monitored especially in the home /workshop.

If this is not practical, at least the setup should be in a location where little or no harm can occur if an error develops ( IE in the field, away from cars etc ) 

Edited By Timbo - Administrator on 09/06/2010 17:19:08

[Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage]

Maybe your point is why hand held devices (phones & PSPs) only have 1 single lithium cell, so the chargers can be simpler

[Chris Bott - Moderator]

You ( well I ) can also have similar problems if you set the charger incorrectly 

[Flite08]

I don't think blowing lipos up is an age related thing, mistakes can be made at any age, even the bright young things of today will eventually get old (they hope!!)

[Vecchio Austriaco]

And the blow up is not only related to LIPO's. Happened also to me with NiMh - using an uncontrolled charger at high charging current. Went a moment into the garden - forgot about the fast charging action - and got a nice burn mark into my working table.

 

I was happy enough to see the smoke coming out of my garage so I could grab the  burning batteries with a leather garden glove and throw them out onto the concrete path.

 

Errors like this are happening. And are not age related.

VA

[Doug Ireland]

well said

[Bryce Allcorn - BritFlight.co.uk]

Not a nice story and a horrible way to learn not to leave them unattended.

 

Just a useful tip, if this does happen to you and you have the bad luck to have to call me or my colleagues around the country, do tell them what you were doing and if there are other LiPo's near the source of the fire, these things can be dangerous when they pop and we appreciate the warning.

[Barrie Dav 2]

I quite agree with you flight 08. 

[Tony Smith 7]

Posted by Timbo - Administrator on 09/06/2010 09:45:25:

He broke the absolute cardinal rule of dealing with Lipos.

NEVER CHARGE UNATTENDED.

Very sorry to hear of his incident.

Discussions like this put me right off the idea of Lipos,  but I thought I'd ask for clarification.  

 

This requirement to always be in attendance while charging, is this because there is some visible warning that would allow you to switch off before there's any damage?    I have this vision of the battery bursting into flames or exploding without warning.   If that's the case then being present would clearly mean there's a possibility of damage limitation but it doesn't sound an ideal precaution.    Do you standby with a fire extinguisher or blanket?

 

Would it be reasonable to charge in a fire resistant container?  Say a metal dustbin.

[Tim Mackey]

Being in attendance just means that you have the opprtunuit to spot any problems, such as swelling cells, charger error tones etc, plus of course, the main one - if the battery did overcharge and ignite, then you have a chance to extinguish it, rather than return to your home burnt down.

 

Yes - many people do charge them in fireproof containers - or purpose made "sacks".

 

Tony...its wrong to be "put right off" - they are no more dangerous than many other fuels - indeed its arguable that they are safer than say petrol, or nitromethane etc if simple precautions are not taken. I wonder how many reports one reads of fires being satrted through careless storage, or smoking whilst handling inflammable liquids etc..

Whats important to note is that in almost every single case ( possibly every one actually ) of a LiPO fire - user error was always to blame in some form. They do not simply self ignite all of their own accord, the operator must do something wrong to initiate that. The very very largest majority of errors are via setting the charger incorrectly, and these days, most smart chargers have clever software to detect the cell count - and if selected wrongly.... it simply wont start. Cahrgers also clearly display the charge current selected, and If a user overrides such a warning...then they are again being careless / reckless.

Edited By Timbo - Administrator on 10/06/2010 18:21:35

[Peter 'Ivanna Crashalot' Savage]

As timbo shows in his other thread, you can bend lipos in hard crashes but as long as they are not gassing/bloating or punctured, they should be fine and very unlikely to explode, oh and don't charge them at too high current (more than 2.25 amps for a 2250mAh or 1 amp for a 1000mAh) or it is only a matter of time till they go up, not counting the special 5c (11.25 amps for a 2250 lipo? that doesn't sound right ) charge rating lipos, not sure what these have the others don't

 

Peter 

[Tony Smith 7]

I just did a fag packet calculation, lets see if anyone agrees with this.

 

Assume a 2000mAh battery, 10v.   I make that 72,000 J energy, or say equivalent to running an electric kettle (2.4KW) for 30 seconds.     If that's correct, it doesn't sound as if it would be too difficult to make an enclosure that could take that worst case, without a dangerous temperature rise outside the enclosure.

 

As for being "put right off", its not just the hazard but the whole hassle of new terminology, new charger etc.   Then to hear that I need to stand and watch for the whole charging process (an hour?) or at least not to leave the room, that just sounds not worth it.

[Tim Mackey]

Hassle ? Charging lipos is really easy  - honest - its one of the reasons I use em in everything.

Choose the right one in the chargers menu, push the button, and they are done in 1 hour.

 

No messing about with auto /manual rates , or worrying about false peak detect etc as with NiMhs. Also, many NiMhs require around .5C rate, so thats at least two hours to wait, and they need a trickle forming chare before the forst use also....thats 14 hours normally!

 

As for monitoring,  I confess to sometimes leaving the area ( my attached garage ) but I am only in the next room, wth the door open, and pop my head in occasionally to see that all is well. Alternatively, I will simply put them on charge whilst I am in the garage doing other work....its no big deal. Very often, I simply take them with me to the flying site, and charge em up on the grass, away from the car etc.

In around 7 years of lipo use, literally hundreds / thousandsof charges and flights I have never had a single problem.

Sure, a certain discipline and organised style of mind is necessary, but thats me anyway

[Brian Hammond]

The person who thinks over 70 years old is past it probably thinks we should not drive cars .I have seen many mistakes with LIPOS,LEAD ACID and other storage devices in my time.It is all down to common sense and using the correct equipment. One of our members accidentally put a lipo on charge and forgot the default setting on his charger is NiCad! You can guess what happened,and he is in his 50,s!

[Wingman]

You said it Timbo - thousands of charge cycles without a single problem - LiPo batts are virtually risk-free. I'm still using Hyperion LiPos that I started leccy flight with 4 years ago and they've been crashed and bashed but still give virtually full capacity.

And as for young Peter - that sound you hear is the rolled up newspaper coming towards the back of your head!