*Putting* water in your DC collection bin?

[Robert Galloway]

Do you have any record of spontaneous combustion coming about from dried wood, subsequently rendered wet as he describes? Don't think it happens.

rhg

J. Clarke wrote:

[J. Clarke]

I'd rather not find out the hard way. Spontaneous combustion _can_ occur with _dry_ wood but it takes a big pile. Get a little rot going and who knows--that's pretty much the mechanism by which haystacks catch fire after a rain. While spontaneous combustion is the topic of a certain amount of research I don't think it can be described as a perfectly understood phenomenon.

[George]

J. is not a scientist, but a believer.

You are correct in assuming that it is the oxidation of volatile organics -exothermic reaction - in confinement which causes ignition. They are not normally found in seasoned wood.

[Dave Hinz]

What, spontaneous combustion in moist wood-like substances, or from someone specifically in this situation you mean?

It's certainly not much different from any other wet hay-like situation. And I have stuck my hands into a pile of fresh sawdust to find it was warm inside.

Dave Hinz

[Richard Clements]

[George]

I note the word "fresh" in your answer. Now read the question.

[Dave Hinz]

I would, my top-posting friend, but you've quoted in such a way to make it inconvenient. Also, whatever your point may be is masked by your apparent attitude, so I can't see much point. Maybe you're saying that moist sawdust is different somehow from moist sawdust?

[George]

Are you bottom-posting because your brains are there?

As I said before, it is volatile organics produced by _GREEN_ hay or manure, or sawdust which ignite.

It is a chemical reaction, and those chemicals are no longer present in hay properly crimped and dried, or as the question to which you allegedly replied, previously dried wood shavings.

You're sitting in front of a reference library, why not look up the real answer instead of displaying your ignorance and then trying to defend it with ad hominem bullshit (which ignites less readily than horse, because cattle are more efficient in their digestion).

> I note the word "fresh" in your answer. Now read the question. >

[Dave Hinz]

No, I'm posting in the order that conversations take place in, so as not to (ahem) come accross as an arrogant person whose pronouncements shalt be the last word.

You seem to be equating my "fresh sawdust" with "green hay or manure" now, which is most decidedly not what I had written.

So, the pile of sawdust I stuck my hands into wasn't really warm then? Odd, sure felt like it.

damp sawdust cannot spontaneously combust? How sure are you of this? Showing that hay combusts for reason (A), and showing that sawdust does not have reason (A), does not mean sawdust does not spontaneously combust, it just means it doesn't spontaneously combust _for that precise reason_. Yes?

[Scott Lurndal]

Does that mean I can't put them in a closed compost bin then? They surely won't dry there (but they will get pretty warm).

My trash company takes yard waste. One can either rent a bin from the City or pile the stuff in the street for pickup.

scott

(However, I just emptied the DC into the compost pile last weekend, and within a couple of hours, the chips (on the top of the pile) were at well over 110 degree F - Now, mind you, I was jointing and planing both green

2x6's and KD studs, so there was definitely green wood in the pile).

[J. Clarke]

The key there is _closed_. No oxygen.

[Mark Hopkins]

[George]

Did you do any search at all, or read the material I referenced?

Did you catch the significance of the CRITICAL temperature? 100 C / 212 F is the boiling point of water, which, up until that temperature is reached, has been cooling the mass by evaporation, preventing ignition. You see, wet hay, even when green, has to dry out before it can combust.

As I look out to the north I see round bales stretching across the next 40. All have great bulk to provide insulation, all are undeniably wet, and none are flaming, because the volatile organics which cause spontaneous ignition are not there.

Oh yes, you put out a hay fire with water.

[George]

Yep, on record as saying that, absent the volatile organics which are the source of the ignition, you have wet sawdust, which won't burn on its own or with a flame until the water is expelled. Fresh sawdust and fresh hay outgas the same.

The wonderful thing about science is that there is a cause - effect, reproducible outcome.

You f> > As I said before, it is volatile organics produced by _GREEN_ hay or manure,

[J. Clarke]

George, comments like that make it clear that you can't stand to have anyone disagree with you and when you can't convince someone with facts and figures (and you're not going to with the kind of assertions you're making because you're assuming that the existence of one mechanism of ignition precludes the existence of others and further, you're arguing that in the presence of unknowns one should take the dangerous path rather than then safe one) you'd rather insult them than agree to disagree and get on with your life.

If science knew everything then the scientists would be out of a job. Remember that.

[George]

It's not me you should agree with, it's reality.

Find another source of ignition anywhere but in your imagination? Please let us know.

The water of precise knowledge is in front of you. Drink.

[Dave Hinz]

So your statement, without weasel-words built in as you have done, is "Sawdust from a woodworking shop cannot spontaneously combust", yes or no?

And yet, there are people who don't understand it, and will expand one situation to an unlrelated situation.

That's kind of amusing to read, since I'm the one in the back of the ambulance, working on the patient.

Draw a venn diagram of your sawdust/manure/fire theory, and you can show yourself where the flaw in your logic is.

[Dave Hinz]

Oily rags are not fresh manure or wet hay, and yet they can spontaneously combust.

Oh, the irony.

[J. Clarke]

I would much rather it be in my imagination than in my dust collector.

ROF,L.

[George]