Boom!

fixerupper · Aug 14, 2008

Well I can add another item to the long list of dumb things I shouldn't have done. Today I threw an old herbicide drum in the bonfire to burn the paint off it. It was cleaned out but I figured the scrap yard would ask fewer questions if it was burned. Anyway, I forgot to unscrew the bungs and about ten munutes later there was what sounded like a sonic boom. I was in the machine shed about a hundred feet away and I felt the compression on my chest.
When I looked out the door to see what happened I saw the end of the barrel landing in the grass about two hundred feet from the fire. Nothing was hurt or damaged, but I'm sure my blood pressure was up a bit. Those babies put out a lot of energy when they explode! If any of you are thinking about mixing empty barrels and fire, think twice. Jim

Heyseed · Aug 14, 2008

Glad you walked away, had a smaller version spread my burn pile all over the yard when a aresol can snuck into a bag of "burn" trash.
Neat double explosion if you are ready for it. KA..BOOOM

RobMD · Aug 14, 2008

Sounds pretty funny actually. Glad no one was hurt.

DR Darren · Aug 14, 2008

during the war, being a fire fighter, we had to burn paperwork, so we would toss our trash in there to, well one day i was buring the trash and heard about a dozen little whistles and a bunch of zipping. turns out the little tobascco bottles they include in MRE"s like to be little missles. couple zipped past me and about 100 ft away put some small holes in the canvas tents.

but of course, have to keep playing with them each time we burned papers lol

Anonymous-0 · Aug 14, 2008

It is also impressive what happens when you toss an almost empty small propane torch cylinder in a burning barrel! The casing was up in the air at least 10 seconds and just missed my car when it came down. Never did that again!

Kevin in OK · Aug 14, 2008

Read a story one time about some guys who threw an empty keg on a bonfire, went inside and about an hour later the keg blew. The story said had they been outside it would have likely killed them.

Kevin

Anonymous-0 · Aug 14, 2008

In the Firefighter HazMat world we call that a BLEVE, that means Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor or BLEVE... Blast Leveling Everything Very Effectively. Ususally it has something to do with a propane tank with direct flame impigement, due to an accident or fire or something. However boys will be boys. A few years back we responded to an accident (?), the teenagers threw a empty beer keg on a fire. 2 dead and 2 with 3rd degree burns. One of those nights that will live with me the rest of my life. Glad I was not the Sheriff Deputy that had to wake up the parents and tell them.

Anonymous-0 · Aug 15, 2008

Did you know that If you drop the outer covering of a pto shaft(the metal telescoping guard, female half) bell end down, into a burn barrel, it will heat to almost red hot? Further, If you were then to start dropping spray paint cans (Valve side down) into this set up, each will melt the valve out, and become a self propelled missile kinda like a mortar? Its good that others have done this, so we don't feel the need to.

jose bagge · Aug 15, 2008

around the barn, half emptied water bottles always seem to find the way into the burn pile.
( the women gotta keep hydrated, I reckon) WHile it's not a major explosion, they give a good lttle pop that let's you know their in there! Amazing how the water inside will keep those flimsy plastic bottles alive long enough to build up the pressure to create that puff.
Frankly, i think the bottled water industry is the greatest scam ever perpetrated on human kind, but that's another post...

Anonymous-0 · Aug 15, 2008

Do you suppose there was a connection between consumption of the contents of the keg and the decision that it would be a good idea to try to burn it.

TomH in PA · Aug 15, 2008

Burning some trash when I was about 10, I noticed an avocado seed had rolled out of the fire. Just as I pushed it back in with a stick: KABOOM. I found later it was a hair spray can that blew up, but I still get nervous around avocado seeds.

S.Crum · Aug 15, 2008

The women folk love their fancy areosol shower jell and shampoo. Of course the empties have to go somewhere. I finally got the message thru to them after one of their cast offs landed on the hood of favorite daughter's car. I'm not a real fan of sorting the burnables. They got the idea (as long as it is their idea) to have a separate can in the bathroom for such non-burnables (duh).

big fred · Aug 15, 2008

4th of July trick I learned this year. Take a 2 liter pop bottle, put a little dry ice in it. Makes a kind of crinkling sound just before it goes off. Makes a heck of a boom, and won't accidentally ignite a grass fire.

Nancy Howell · Aug 15, 2008

I agree. You can count the number of times I"ve bought bottled water on the fingers of one hand and have a couple of fingers left over.

JML755 · Aug 15, 2008

Nancy & Jose,
That's one of my pet peeves. Maybe we could start a club like the Sierra Club and become influential enough to get them banned. Nope, that won't happen. Best thing would be to put a deposit on them I guess. We've got refillable water bottles up the kazoo, but my teenage daughters dig into the bottled water stash all the time (supposedly reserved for away horse shows) to take to the barn to ride. They say "it's too much trouble to fill the bottles and this is more convenient". Guess so, since I'M paying for the bottled water!

Also, at the local high school, there's a bottled water vending machine ($1) RIGHT NEXT TO THE FRICKIN WATER FOUNTAIN! I agree with Jose, what a racket. I'm waiting for the marketing geniuses to come out with "bottled air".

Bob · Aug 15, 2008

Bus Driver · Aug 15, 2008

As a volunteer fireman, we did lots of training. Burning a car one night, a shock absorber blew up. Part of it came straight up through the closed trunk lid and about 50 feet into the air.

Clodbuster · Aug 15, 2008

Thank you for sharing that so we don't try it.

Now where are those old paint cans!!!!!!!!????????????

John S-B · Aug 15, 2008

When I was a kid, I was told to put a box of trash on the fire. We didn"t know there was an old propane cylinder in the bottom of the box. the threaded top went one way, bouncing off a porch overhang where people were sitting, and the cylinder went the other way about 100 feet. Nobody hurt, but scared the crap out of us.

showcrop · Aug 15, 2008

The end may be near. There was recently an auction near me of a large parcel of land where they were going to pump and bottle 200,000 gallons of "spring water" per day. the people in the area fought it but it looks like the economy and environmentalists killed it.

504-2 · Aug 15, 2008

The best scam ever is bottled water in this country. There is a plant in town that bottles water, some is spring water that they truck in about 15 miles from the spring, and most of it is water from the city water dept. says so right on the label. Check the lable the next time you are at wally world.

fixerupper · Aug 15, 2008

Never thought I'd be buying drinking water, but when traveling on the wheat harvest I never drink local water. My 'system' just doesn't treat me very well when I introduce it to strange water. Name brand bottled water is the safest bet. It might sound like I have expensive tastes, but looking for a tree to hide behind on the barren plain isn't much fun.Tried some Wally World water that tasted like swamp water. Maybe it was! Jim

dave guest · Aug 15, 2008

This was a different kind of KABOOM. I was burning some plywood scraps and I saw piece of galvanized pipe that was a trip hazard. I pulled it and instantly found it very warm. The Kaboom was what happened to my right hand. I had a blister the size of baseball. At ER they showed it to all the staff. The good part was it was chilly weather and I stuck my hand in a pond immediately for about 15 minutes. The cold water eliminated all the pain entirely. ER didn't belive me and gave me pain pills I never took. Try cold water on a burn and you'll never believe how well it works. Had a big bandage for about a month. Lord was watching another dummy, never got infected or anything.

Mark - IN. · Aug 16, 2008

I was doing a repair at a refinery the other day, and they have their own fire department, and as I walked through their training room they had some pretty good sized extinguishers out on display. Huge heavy thick industrial extinguishers. One of them obviously had been burned which is I'm sure why it was displayed. Clearly it had exploded like a bomb and was split and torn and ripped, what was left of it. Not something I would've cared to been around when that happened. That looked like a pretty potent explosion to me.

Mark

Boom!

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