Residential Fire Threat from Consumer Electronics

Residential fire safety is without a doubt a big deal. In the United States there is a good track record of home fire safety and various governmental and private testing companies be sure the products we purchase are safe. Many products are labeled with logo's and declarations of safety by testing agencies like Underwriters Laboratories and TUV Rheinland. When we encounter a product that is not safe, sometimes the results are catastrophic.

Consumer electronics have many components that can throw off a spark such as resistors, diodes, transistors and capacitors. Simple overloads or component failure can cause a condition producing little fires within your television or stereo. Voltage surges brought on by lightning as well as power company troubles are one of the greatest reasons for electronic component breakdown. A voltage surge can result in a sudden failure or a delayed (or latent) failure of these components.

When an electronic component fails, it could merely stop conducting electricity or open the circuit it is in or it could short the circuit. Short circuits may cause over heating of the component in question or surrounding circuits. This over heating could cause a small fire within your electronic device and is often seen outside the cabinet as a puff of smoke or bad smell coming from the piece of equipment.

It is critically important that this tiny bit of fire can not be used to ignite any surrounding combustible material and create a more substantial and more dangerous fire. In American televisions, the plastic cabinets are manufactured from fire resistant material and despite the fact that it is easy to burn a hole in the cabinet with a torch, the fire fades out right after the torch is removed.

Manufacturing consumer electronics that can't catch fire and burn outside the cabinet appears not to be a requirement in the United States. We are inadvertently at the mercy of bad engineering, cost cutting manufacturing and testing by testing agencies that do not analyze for possible fire hazards. Since these products catch fire in low numbers and sometimes the origin of a residential home fire is undetermined, some of these badly designed and shabbily tested electronic devices go undiscovered and may even be lurking within your home.

The question is; Would you prefer to know if one of the products in your home had even the merest potential for starting your house on fire? If consumer electronics could be made so they literally cannot start your house on fire, would you not want to buy those products? Might you sleep far better knowing that your consumer electronics cannot catch fire, or maybe probably not catch fire. Personally, I choose products that cannot catch fire.

You will find there's internet site where a customer that had a 'whole house' audio unit catch fire in his home and he details his experience with the manufacturer, Russound and the testing organization TUV Rheinland. The Russound CAV6.6 caught fire in his home and burned outside the cabinet. He was able to extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher, but if he had not been home, his home and family might have been lost.

Instead of admit there was a problem with the product, a Russound executive threatened to sue the customer if he told anybody about the fire. There was a CPSC recall of the product, however the prescribed fix for the CAV audio unit left the combustible material exposed to all the parts capable of burning up. Russound and TUV Rheinland instead decided to place a fuse in line with just one component that can emit a spark.

Neither Russound nor the testing agency, TUV Rheinland examined the Russound CAV6.6 device that caught fire prior to declaring the defect and prescribing a remedy. The question is: Would you sleep better with consumer electronics that cannot catch fire, or products like those built by Russound and tested by TUV Rheinland that probably will not catch fire? You decide. Additional information is available at the It's On Fire Web Site