Pride and joy up in smoke

[Daydream believer]

Acetylene may decompose in a self-sustaining reaction after only moderate heating or shock, hence the 24 hour cooling in a dam (or pond) after any thermal exposure. By comparison, an LPG bottle popping is very tame.

I would not call it a "pop". I had a serious fire on one of my building sites when a shed with dozens of rolls of bituthene went up & in the shed were 3 bottles of propane.
The bottles exploded with almighty bangs & flew quite a distance, through the shed walls (plywood) The metal casings split in the form of large open spiral springs rather than the simple splits that one might have expected. One might also have expected the valves to have blown off but that was not the case either.
The fire brigade were on the scene very quickly, but would not go near the fire until all the bottles were seen to have exploded. By this time it was just a case of containment as the bitumen burned so fiercely that it even bent the barrel of a cartridge nail fixing gun.

 

[JumbleDuck]

The metal casings split in the form of large open spiral springs rather than the simple splits that one might have expected. One might also have expected the valves to have blown off but that was not the case either.

I've only once seen a burst propane cylinder, after the Great Fire which destroyed the original Crinan Boats chandlery and many boats there. 1995? In that case there was a neat hemispherical bulge on the side of the cylinder, about the size of half a tennis ball, with a crack about 2" long across its top. A burst steel plook, basically.

 

[TQA]

This happened in Cul de Sac du Marin in 2015. They were cooking breakfast when the fire started but it is not clear where or what started the fire.

She burned to the waterline then sank. At one point there was a loud whoompf with a 20 ft high lance of fire which was probably the LPG tank letting go.



A year or so earlier a British sailor was killed when his boat exploded off St Vincent That was attributed to LPG.

 

[Daydream believer]

There was a story in one of the yachting mags about a chap aboard what I seem to recall was a forces boat. After the bang he was laying in his bunk with something "wet" next to him & he later realised that it was a crew member's limb.

 

[Blue Sunray]

There was a story in one of the yachting mags about a chap aboard what I seem to recall was a forces boat. After the bang he was laying in his bunk with something "wet" next to him & he later realised that it was a crew member's limb.

I you may well be thinking of this incident: https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/exp...n-poole-harbour-england-with-4-people-injured

 

[JumbleDuck]

I you may well be thinking of this incident: https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/exp...n-poole-harbour-england-with-4-people-injured

That's the one I was thinking of. Often quoted to justify all sorts of gadgets, but in fact was down to gross mismanagement and poor maintenance.

 

[capnsensible]

There was a story in one of the yachting mags about a chap aboard what I seem to recall was a forces boat. After the bang he was laying in his bunk with something "wet" next to him & he later realised that it was a crew member's limb.

Seeing as how the injured crew member had his leg amputated in hospital, the story seems a little far fetched.......

 

[Blue Sunray]

Seeing as how the injured crew member had his leg amputated in hospital, the story seems a little far fetched.......

Never let the truth get in the way of a good dit.

 

[capnsensible]

Never let the truth get in the way of a good dit.

There we were, force 16 off Ushant, nothing up but a double reefed courtesy flag and still no one spilt their soup.....