Yeah…I did mean household gizmos and agree a car fire is only to be escaped from. I am more worried about setting my home on fire if a battery decides to go crazy.
I do have one case though (my e-scooter) where it is a pretty big battery. Tongs will not suffice. Probably weighs 70 pounds (not to mention it is embedded in the rest of the scooter).
There isn’t any practical way to extinguish a lithium ion battery fire. Full stop.
There are plenty of products hitting the market (one might call them schemes or gimmicks) with the claim that it’s the Next Best Thing for battery fires. I have yet to see anything that shuts the fire off.
What’s actually happening with a battery fire isn’t that there’s a matteess-sized or shoe-box-sized battery on fire; what’s really going on is hundreds or thousands of smaller battery cells, all tucked in snuggly next to their siblings, that are on fire. Each cell looks like a big AA battery (they’re called 18650s, as they’re 18mm wide by 65mm long, but I can’t think in metric). When one cell gets upset - which could be from overcharging, from overdischarging, from an external short, an internal short (the likelihood of which gets greater over time due to dendritic somethingorother inside the cell), from overheating, or from trauma - the cell goes into what’s called thermal runaway. The cell heats up enough as all of the stored energy is converted to heat, which pressurizes the cell, bursting it and releasing the electrolyte, which is flammable. The now burning electrolyte heats up the neighboring cells, which go into runaway, rinse, lather, repeat.
The electrolyte also contains oxygen, so the fire is going to burn inside the case regardless of what we do. Cooling it down or chemically interrupting the fire are the only ways out of this mess.
The key to putting out a battery fire is stopping the progression of thermal runaway.
The problem is that the battery manufacturers are trying to maximize density, so the cells are tucked as close together as possible. There are little to no channels inside the battery case where we can put water inside to cool it down. That said, if we put water in, it shorts out other cells and now they’re in thermal runaway. Whoops.
Ok, let’s open the case up. There are piercing nozzles on the market that poke a hole into the case and spray water. Now I have trauma to cells and water. More thermal runaway cells. Whoops.
What about chemicals of some variety? It needs to be electrically inert, non corrosive, easily conveyable through a hose or extinguisher, and I need a way to inject it into the battery in a way that I can reliably get to when the battery is on fire. Let me know when someone invents one that works, I’ll buy some stock.
The current philosophy, as was stated above, is to let the battery burn itself up and protect exposures. If we attack an EV car fire the way we’ve attacked ICE fires for the last 120 years, we use 40,000 gallons of water (which gets contaminated) and it takes 8 hours. When you’re done, you have a burned up car. If we protect exposures only and let the car burn, we re done it 2 hours and have little to no contaminated water, and still end up with a burned up car.
The blankets that go over the car or the bags that you put the device in are an interesting idea, but there’s a valid concern that while you’ve covered the burning thing, the flammable electrolyte is building up under the blanket/bag. If I can confine enough of it and still have an ignition source, I can have an explosion. Not optimal.
E-mobility devices scare me to no end. I worry more about those than cars. People bring them into their homes and apartments, and leave them next to the front door. They overcharge. They beat on the batteries while they ride them. They use non-listed third party batteries. They modify the batteries to get higher discharge rates. Park them outside 10 feet away from anything you care about.
Smaller battery powered devices like phones and laptops aren’t a big deal in my mind. Sure, they can catch fire. Toss it into the oven or into the kitchen sink or the bathtub (a cast iron tub, not a fiberglass tub) and call the fire department. We in the 2020s don’t remember how many appliances caught fire in the 1960s to 1990s. We’re just back to what’s new is old again.
We figured out how 100 years ago how to handle a car with 15-25 gallons of gasoline in it. The problem we have now is that technology is outpacing our ability to write codes and standards on how society deals with the new stuff. In 10 years we’ll have this thing solved.
ETA: @Whack-a-Mole 2 posts up. I now see the professionals have arrived with their apparatus and veteran crew.
My e-bike battery is similar. It’s theoretically detachable from the frame. Once you locate the key to unlock it. The whole e-bike is stupid-heavy.
Living in a big building as I do, getting the bike outdoors to burn up there would not be easy and I sure as hell don’t want to get on an elevator with it. I now think the least bad solution is to put it in the all concrete stairwell.
Those are meant to keep fire out, and prevent any fire that gets in from spreading.
Putting a burning anything into a fire escape sounds insanely irresponsible. Until you consider the very, very few other options.
I have the exact same problem. I do have a balcony though. Not sure which would be a better choice. Balcony is closer. Stairwell is made to resist fire but I have to push the burning thing down the hall. Not great choices.
ETA: My building is modern and has a sprinkler system (my apartment has sprinkler heads like every 20 feet more or less) so I doubt I would burn the building down but I’d still be royally screwed with the damage all that water would cause to my place as well as neighbors. Certainly better than a fire but still not good.
My e-bike warns to never let the battery out of your site while it is charging, and unplug it immediately after it finishes charging. Considering it is a large battery that charges pretty slowly, that means 4-6 hours of staring at it while it charges, and then unplugging as soon as the light turns green.
It seems they should have spent a bit more time on safety features. My lawnmower battery, which I don’t think is quite as big, but is the third largest battery I own, has no such rules. The largest battery, in my car, does not either.
So yeah, that e-bike one is definitely the scariest.
I was wiping and decommissioning old laptops at work recently, and I plugged in a 15+ year old Macbook, and in the few minutes it took to boot up the battery swelled enough to break the trackpad and bend the case. That’s one that gets the drive pulled to wipe, instead of wiped in place.
I wonder if that is a “cover your ass” (CYA) clause in the instructions. I think almost all modern battery chargers know not to overcharge your battery. But, in case something goes wrong and you sue them, they will point to that section and ask you if you watched the e-bike for six hours while plugged in (which no one would do).
Case dismissed.
Do not under any circumstances store anything in a stairway. Exit stairs are meant to keep fire out, not to contain one within. We often don’t even put sprinklers at the landings in exit stairs, just one or two at the top and bottom. A fire in an exit stair is wicked difficult to extinguish (I can’t approach it from any good direction, and my standpipe where I’m going to get my water from is compromised), and it cuts off egress for any occupants. It’s also a violation of the fire code pretty much everywhere.
Part of the codes not being able to keep up with the technology is that the sprinklers in a dwelling unit are not designed to control a fire in an e-mobility device. Sprinklers are designed for an expected fire in a dwelling unit with heat release rates and total Btus developed like we see from furniture and household stuff. The jet flames and duration of an e-mobility fire are well beyond residential sprinkler protection. The sprinklers are going to slap the fire down, but there’s a distinct chance the fire will overpower the sprinklers. There’s been a lot of talk about doing the fire testing to determine what the flow rates and discharge densities are to handle an e-mobility fire, but we aren’t there yet.
To be clear:
I am NOT storing ANYTHING in the emergency stairway (I wouldn’t but also my building is aggressive about such violations and would put a stop to it ASAP). My idea was if my e-scooter caught on fire should I move it there since it is all concrete and metal (things that don’t easily catch on fire)?
I thought the sprinklers in my place are not meant to save my place but rather save the building. If they go off (for whatever reason)…my place is screwed. But, the fire will not wreck the building (i.e. will not spread beyond my place).
ETA: I do have a lot of sprinkler heads in my place. Every room has at least one…even the guest bathroom. Bigger rooms have more than one.
I’m in the same boat as @Whack-a-Mole. Sprinkler-equipped apartment in a concrete high-rise. With an aging e-bike.
If the e-bike battery catches fire in the apartment while I am home and I notice promptly before the thing is unapproachable I could:
I’m not advocating any of these choices. But as best I can noodle out, these are the logical / physical choices I have to work with. And no, there is nowhere truly outdoors away from the building structure to store the thing.
My apologies, @Whack-a-Mole, I was on my soap box.
What the sprinklers are intended do, in a residential building, usually depends on how big/tall the building is. If you’re 4 floors or less tall, they’re intended to keep the fire small enough to let everyone escape, building-be-damned. A fire is “allowed” to spread in these kinds of buildings. The system is usually only capable of flowing 2 or 4 sprinklers at a time, anything more than that, all bets are off as to whether or not they’re going to work. It’s a trade off to get the safety of sprinklers at a lower installation cost. If the owner cared enough, they’d put in a real system.
If you’re 5 or more floors high, the sprinklers are supposed to protect the building, and as a great side effect, the people in it. The room of origin is always written off, I mean, it was on fire for a couple of minutes before we started to throw 20-45 gallons of water a minute at it, but the intent is to stop the fire wherever it was when it started.
You forgot:
My WAG is that option 2 is the least bad option, depending on the composition of the balcony (I assume concrete on a high rise building) and the flammability of the facade. Might want to store it out there if you are allowed.
Don’t y’all who own ebikes and live in apartment buildings have an outdoor (or at least, garage) place to store it?)
I wouldn’t want to get close to a burning ebike. Get away, pull the fire alarm if it’s a multi-unit dwelling, and call the fire department.
But now I’m thinking, if i buy an ebike, i should probably also build a shed to store it in.
In my case my building has a few bike rooms but explicitly bans electric anything.
But, they let people park Tesla cars in our garage.
I think the assumption is e-bikes/scooters have shit Chinese batteries expected to explode and Tesla has “good” batteries that never will.
I’d be curious what would happen if you dumped a bunch of starlite on it (e.g. as a pelletized sand), whether it would be able to contain the flame while protecting the surroundings?
The good news is that I usually charge my cell phone on the dividing half-wall between the kitchen and the family room. The bad news is that due to my tendency to clutter, the phone usually charges on top of a bunch of paper clutter (i.e.- “kindling”) sitting on top of a wooden top rail (i.e.- “where the real big fire starts”)
And, the phone is a Samsung, famous for bursting into flames!
Eh, I think one can get overly paranoid about such things. The important thing is to know how to deal with it in the very unlikely event of a fire, and for small items like phones and tablets, submerging in a water bath seems like the right strategy.
As a matter of principle, I also maintain a “dry chemical” type fire extinguisher in the kitchen.
I bought some fire blankets on Amazon and keep one in the kitchen.
Hah! I thought about including that option. 
The difficulty of lifting an awkward 120# burning bicycle over a 4-1/2’ railing is a problem. Although a little adrenaline can work wonders. It’s a sheer drop to the ground, which is good. What’s down there is where the people walk & poop their precious children annoying Pekinese. We’ve got a decent shot at crunching one of them; somebody seems to be there almost all hours of day & night. Then again the guilt-free opportunity to pour flaming pitch a burning bicycle onto one of those darling creatures miserable little shits is very very attractive. 
Facade is painted stucco. Railings are powder-coated extruded aluminum. Deck surface is gritted painted concrete. My patio furniture is powder-coated extruded aluminum plus some cushions. Pretty impervious.
Not sure how hot that fire burns, but if latex exterior building paint is flammable, that’d be the point of spread.
Ditto here.
To show how quickly a Lithium battery can become unhappy, may I present this sad video:
What happens if the burning car is in an underground parking garage? If it burns for two hours, can that do structural damage to the building, or set other cars on fire?