Christmas Light Home Fire in Arlington Heights, IL

[daviddavid]

Sister lives in this town and sent me this article. At this point everything is speculation. Should be interesting to follow this one. This area is pretty nice and likely not arson.

House Fire, Car Fires on Chestnut Ave Just North of Oakton St, Arlington Heights

 

[daviddavid]

 

[technoz]

Hope the HPWC was installed by a certified electrician properly

 

[DirtyT3sla]

A neighbor reported that a Tesla and a charging station were possibly located inside the garage. Initially there was no confirmation that any Tesla equipment caused the fire.

Wow... just because a Tesla was in the driveway they put this garbage? Click bait if I've ever seen it. I also have a Tesla in my garage. You know what else is in there sometimes? Gasoline. Kerosene. Give me a break with this.

 

[daviddavid]

My sister know the people that had the fire. The root cause of the fire was electrical cords that were laid out over the driveway and used for Xmas lights. Initially the fireman thought it was the Tesla charger, but later was ruled out after further investigation. Case Closed

 

[ohmman]

Moderator note: Title amended.

 

[George Marley]

Video here.
Interesting.

 

[pilotSteve]

Garage roasting on Chestnut Ave.... sounds like a bad Christmas song parody......

 

[George Marley]

Video here.
Interesting.

Amazing how those Christmas lights burn!

 

[hifipj]

I just bought this car at auction. Studied video and photos from the fire carefully.
Hoping to salvage rear drive unit and the battery.

 

[SMAlset]

I just bought this car at auction. Studied video and photos from the fire carefully.
Hoping to salvage rear drive unit and the battery.

Curious to see photos of the front of the car when you get it. Do not see it on Copart any longer where I'm assuming you picked it up from. From the video both of those cars closest to the garage doors must have a ton of soot and smoke damage. Was the front melted? Good luck with your salvage efforts.

Nice home and what sounds like at least 4 cars destroyed or damaged by the fire. Who hasn't used extension cords to run holiday lights. Wonder exactly what happened with the cord. Use to live in the general area so the town name caught my attention.

 

[daviddavid]

Curious to see photos of the front of the car when you get it. Do not see it on Copart any longer where I'm assuming you picked it up from. From the video both of those cars closest to the garage doors must have a ton of soot and smoke damage. Was the front melted? Good luck with your salvage efforts.

Nice home and what sounds like at least 4 cars destroyed or damaged by the fire. Who hasn't used extension cords to run holiday lights. Wonder exactly what happened with the cord. Use to live in the general area so the town name caught my attention.

I will try to get more details on this. My sister knows the owners fairly well. Will report back with any details I can drum up.

 

[hifipj]

Thanks David. If you can contact the owner I do have a few specific questions I'd like to ask.

I was able to locate the owner, and have reached out to him to learn a little bit more info on the car, but have not heard back yet. Hopefully I will hear back.

I've repaired about 7 salvage Teslas in Ukraine. (My main home is in LA area, but have 2nd home in Ukraine.)

Rear drive unit and components are obviously fine.

Main concern is the viability of the battery pack. This is certainly a risk, which I am completely aware of. I bought it based on carefully studying many factors, including watching that video about 100 times, looking very carefully at the damage/burn pattern and area, and I found some additional photos of the car.

I've torn down and reassembled several battery packs. To be honest, I think 90% chance the pack will work perfectly. 5% chance the front 2 modules and possibly cooling tubes in front of the pack will need to be replaced, as the front of the pack suffered the greatest exposure to heat.

I analyzed:

1. Exactly where the fire was burning vis a vis the pack - most of it was burning ABOVE the pack location
2. How long it was burning before put out
3. Ambient temperature at the home address before and during when fire occurred (important because ambient temp of pack was very cold - heat from the fire likely didn't raise cell temp too much - like taking a turkey that's frozen solid out of the freezer and hitting it with a blowtorch for 5min).
4. How much water was sprayed on the pack (pack could've survived the heat, then be destroyed by water from firefighters)
5. Aluminum melting temp vs steel melting temp (600C / 1500C)
6. Fact that aluminum bar that supports the 12v battery is still intact is a good sign

And a bunch of other stuff.

I already have a P90DL MS, and P90DL MX, the plan for this car is its vitals (rear motor/battery) will be transplanted into a very clean 2017 MS 75D I have in Ukraine, and we will convert that car to a P100DL. Hopefully! )

I'll let everybody know how it turns out. If that pack does work properly out of the box, it will be an amazing testament to the great structure and insulation of this battery pack design.

 

[hifipj]

Also - I build custom high-performance e-bikes and battery packs for them, so studied a lot about li-ion cell temps and related info.

Found some great scientific articles testing cells at extreme high temps, for anyone who might be interested. The Cliffs Notes version is that you don't want sustained temps over 60C. Exposure to 80C for a limited time/number of charge cycles will reduce both the max capacity and cycle life of the cell, by about 20-25%. Doing the same at 100C further reduces both, however, the cells tested were still functional.

My hope, of course, is that those 2 front modules of cells in the 'frozen solid turkey' pack did not reach above 60C during the time the fire was burning. Only way to test really will be to check capacity of those individual modules, and run them through several charge cycles.

BTW I assume the car was kept outside as that was where it was parked during the fire. The 2 days prior to the fire, Chicago had very cold temps in the low 20s F. The day of the fire, Jan 9th, about 3pm the ambient temp warmed to 50F, and stayed warmer overnight, and the temp at the time of the fire appears to be about 45F. But since the pack had been sitting in much colder temps for several days and only had about 12 hours at 50F before the fire, my guess is the inside of the pack temp was still high 30s F at the time of the fire.

 

[hifipj]

Curious to see photos of the front of the car when you get it. Do not see it on Copart any longer where I'm assuming you picked it up from. From the video both of those cars closest to the garage doors must have a ton of soot and smoke damage. Was the front melted? Good luck with your salvage efforts.

Nice home and what sounds like at least 4 cars destroyed or damaged by the fire. Who hasn't used extension cords to run holiday lights. Wonder exactly what happened with the cord. Use to live in the general area so the town name caught my attention.

Thanks, hopefully the foreward most modules in the pack will be in good shape. Here are a couple photos.

 

[SMAlset]

Thanks, hopefully the foreward most modules in the pack will be in good shape. Here are a couple photos.

I hope you are able to successfully salvage what you hope to from that Model S and some more to make it worth your effort. I saw the raging fire at the front by the garage door and not sure how badly it affected the car. We have a Model S with sunroof but I’m not really familiar with under the hood or the underside of it.

I detected some popping noise in the video but didn’t seem to indicate the same kind of thermal run away we saw/heard in the Mt. View/101 Model X crash. The fire seemed to get put out fairly quickly but then not sure how long it had been burning when the neighbor started filming. Still the car looks way worse than I thought and sad to see. Knowing this wasn’t the only car destroyed/damaged in this fire can't imagine the impact this has had on the family, who thank god made it out of the home. Thanks for sharing the photos and look forward to updates on your recovery efforts.

 

[hifipj]

There was no thermal runaway. Again, I think the damage was much less thanks to it being a frozen pack, rather than the same fire happening in 100F ambient weather.

Thermal runaway from heat (as opposed to cells being crushed from impact) occurrs when the shell is heated to about 200C.
Thermal-runaway experiments on consumer Li-ion batteries with metal-oxide and olivin-type cathodes - RSC Advances (RSC Publishing) DOI:10.1039/C3RA45748F

So for sure, the inside of the front of that pack didn't hit 200C, but there's a lot of room for damage below that temperature. The top side of that fire was definitely over 600C, as that's the melting point for aluminum. But below the fire, I think the temps were much less. The fire didn't penetrate the floor of the car's salon (interior). They put it out very shortly after the interior started blazing.

Won't know the extent of, if any, damage to the modules until the car arrives and I can open it up in Ukraine. I'm quite confident the rear modules are OK, hopeful the 2 front (stacked) modules didn't overheat.

The next 6 weeks will be an anxious time for me! )

 

[hifipj]

Small update. Car's in Ukraine and in process of transferring parts to my 75D for the upgrade.

We opened battery up, and thankfully it looks perfect inside. No water damage, nothing melted in the forward section of the pack (not even plastic coolant tubes or fuse).

Will update, but if this comes out working good as it appears it will, will be an amazing testament to Tesla's great design of the pack. Protected from heat, water, and impact.

 

[hifipj]

Couple spots on front top definitely got hot for a few minutes.

 

[hifipj]

But inside looks great. Couple small spots on plastic cell cover turned opaque from heat. Gonna test this module before reassembling.
Heat shield on top really did its job.