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Causes of barn fires

D

Dave41A

Member
I have read several messages here in the past few weeks about tractors in barn fires. I will be putting up a barn in the next few years for livestock and their feed. Construction will be wood. My locality does not inspect nor enforce building codes for agricultural structures.

Just wanted to get some ideas on the principal causes of barn fires. I did a search and "smoking" and "chewed wiring" were the only causes that I could find. I don't want to find out the hard way if there's more to it than that & suspect there is. Any insight or pointers to good references/extension documents etc. is appreciated. Just trying to gather my info before I start work. Thanks in advance. Dave
 
My first choice would be wet hay.

I run all electrical in armoured or conduit if mice can be present.
 
Wiring in conduit from the weather head to the fixtures. Unplugging all portable devices when not in use. Keeping flamable liquids in containers out in a separate building. Being confident in the moisture content of all feed and how it is stored. keeping fire extinguishers charged and handy at entry locations and work areas. DO not use part of that building for heat related tasks like welding, cutting. Do not use portable heating systems. if needed, they should be code installed permanent devices. Use LED lighting, Low voltage probably best. run devices at 50% of ampacity of wiring. I believe in lightning rods. They leak away charges into the atmosphere to prevent strikes, not conduct them to ground (though they can). ground metal roofing to earth grounding rods. Pay your insurance company for appropriate insurance that takes into account the above safety factors. Jim
 
I caught it before there was a fire. I had a romex wire running across a ledge and just happened to find it one day. Somehow a rodent had chewed all the insulation off of the wire for an 8' length. I don't know how it did it without getting zapped but there was three bare wires laying there somehow not touching each other in perfect working order. When I replaced the wire I got it off the ledge and nailed it to the rafters.

I think probably the biggest cause would be storing fuel or oils and then trying to heat the building in winter to work on a piece of equipment.
 
Your ideas are great! My equipment is older and I always wonder about the condition of the wiring harness. I added a knife style disconnect at the batteries on all of my equipment plus follow most of your recommendations
 

hay and equipment NEVER go in the same barn. Hay barns are always built away from the other buildings for a reason.
 
If you park a tractor in side the building and plug in a coolant heater in the winter check all the cords regularly because they have been known to cause fires
 
(quoted from post at 19:26:04 12/27/20) I have read several messages here in the past few weeks about tractors in barn fires. I will be putting up a barn in the next few years for livestock and their feed. Construction will be wood. My locality does not inspect nor enforce building codes for agricultural structures.

Just wanted to get some ideas on the principal causes of barn fires. I did a search and "smoking" and "chewed wiring" were the only causes that I could find. I don't want to find out the hard way if there's more to it than that & suspect there is. Any insight or pointers to good references/extension documents etc. is appreciated. Just trying to gather my info before I start work. Thanks in advance. Dave
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"tractors in barn fires"

I don't like to see tractors stored in "barns" used for cattle and/or hay. That combo just doubles the risk of disaster, IMHO.

A friend of mine keeps a couple of tractors he uses to feed the cows in their large pole barn and cords run over the straw on the floor to their block heaters every cold winter night.

I'm amazed he hasn't lost it (yet).
 
"My locality does not inspect nor enforce building codes for agricultural structures."

Same here. But, those codes are there for safety reasons. Build it to code.

As others have said, moisture in stored feed, poor electrical wiring, rodents.
My air compressor had an electrical short once. Luckily, the
properly sized breaker tripped and shut it down. The correctly
wired junction boxes stopped it from flaming into a fire.
 
Kids playing with matches. I almost burned our house down playing with matches. Don't keep oily rags in a pile. Stan
 
Grandpa had two or three burn down due to lightning strikes. One from an electrical short. And when he was an Adams electric welder dealer. He burned down two giving welding demonstrations.
 

Do not put a lightening protection on the barn. My FIL put a lightening protection system on an equipment storage shed per local code recommendations. The lightening protection system was installed by a licensed electrician. 2 years later, the lightening rods attracted the lightening from a large electrical storm. The result was the storage shed was burned to the ground while they were attending a volunteer fire department meeting. They heard the call come in from a neighbor on the dispatch radio.

The result was the total loss of 7 tractors, 2 round balers (small& large), a new mower/conditioner, a new hay rake, an 8 ft King Kutter rotary tiller, a couple miles of fencing material, 2 tons of horse feed in sacks, and the 250 gal outside elevated diesel storage tank. A huge loss only partially covered by insurance. Like starting over from scratch at 70 years old.

Family and friends donated the use of some tractors and equipment to keep the farm going until at least some of the equipment could be replaced. Thank God farmers are willing to aid other farmers in need or he would have lost the 750 acre farm. Here are a few photos to the destruction.

The fire marshall ruled the fire as the result of a natural lightening strike. It did not help that the storage shed was 20 years old with a dirt floor that absorbed all the fuel spills, and the tractor tires were all loaded with methanol to save costs. That will never happen again.

The newly acquired equipment is now stored in smaller sheds remote from each other with concrete floors. A bit of a pain having equipment stored all over the farm, but much safer. No more lightening protection systems either.
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Moisture from critters and manure/ high humidity, the rust from manure acids, the many little fuzzy creatures attracted to the feed and hay. Give it time and something shorts out and poof.

Work on the electrical stuff. Code here is to put the breaker box outside. Indoor boxes corrode too fast. Also run the wires in and out of the bottom of the box.keeps the moisture below, not running into the box.

Conduit, proper grounding, etc.

Do a bang up good job on the wiring. It gets exposed to the most corrosive and moist environment, and a lot of dust and little teeth......

Paul
 
So, on the police scanner this evening, about 2 hours ago, a fire call, barn fire with livestock, hour north of me.

Some timing on your message!
 
I remember old fellas saying after a dairy barn burned, that a good cleansing fire once every generation or two, kept a dairy farm modern. And the fellas lucky enough not to suffer a devastating fire, fell behind and went broke. All very tongue in cheek
 

rew, that is an interesting anecdote about LIGHTNING protection, but I don't see that it shows a connection between the LIGHTNING protection system and the huge fire loss. Was there an investigation by the state Fire Marshall's office? Including the report of an official investigation could transform your interesting story into useful information.
 
Around here in Wayne and Holmes co. Ohio several years back there were lots of barns getting burnt. Took them several years to catch the person who was setting them. I think it was a retired Fireman.
 
So, here are a few causes, and solutions I have heard that start actual barn fires in my area: bad wiring that is not in conduit or metal clad cable. I replaced all cloth insulated wire in my barn and saw plenty of chewed on bare wire. Lightning strikes. Crappy extension plugs. Tractor fires from the exhaust or block heaters. Welding. Heat lamps. And wet hay.
 
keeping several barns/sheds spaced out from each other is one way of keeping things from being totally wiped out if a fire acures,that is what the old timers did..still a good idea if you have room for it.
 
I remember when a big dairy barn burned south of us. We could see the red glow in the sky that cold winter night. The next day we found out it was someone we knew. Not surprising because we knew virtually every farmer in a 20-mile radius around us. He managed to save all his cattle because the fire occurred while he was still up and he got them into a neighboring barn that was empty. He built a brand new barn and later stated that his barn burning was the best thing that ever happened to him.
 
Amen. Most of the shed fires around here have been attributed to "electrical wiring". Farmer bubba doing his own wiring. Number 1. Do the wiring to code. Number 2. Shut it all off when you're not there.
 
Heat lamps, missile type heaters and lightning are the ones I have seen locally. There is always suspicion of insurance fraud it seems also.
 
Old bachelor farmer neighbor used to light those Ohio Blue Tips on the side seam of his striped bib overalls. He could time it just right while milking to coincide with oncoming cow flatulence. Turned his cows into flame throwers.Well, he had to amuse himself somehow. Other than to stand around with his hands in his pockets. (;>))
 
Lightening rods causing a barn to burn down is like saying just because a dog with teeth is going to bite you. Lightening rods are supposed to drain off the electrons in the air near the barn roof to prevent the strike from happening. Of course it can still happen anyway . Look at trees some get hit and some don't. We have a few around the place that have been hit over the years. Some in the woods and some in fence rows.
 
Thanks to everyone who replied. Many good suggestions which made me dig a little more.

The National Electrical Code (NEC) has a section on agricultural buildings (#547) but it is less than 3 pages long. Still, it has good information: Non-metallic conduit is required, GFCI protection all around, and dust & moisture proof lighting, electric motors, etc. I'll probably use low-voltage LED lights with solar cells to avoid the hassle, risk, and expense of 220/110 power. Or flashlights.

The International Building Code (IBC) has a few requirements regarding safety exits and access for the fire department, etc. Chapter 2 and Appendix C outline most of the requirements. However, IBC considers agricultural buildings "Category 1" (lowest risk to human life), so it does not say much.

The term "lightning" does not appear in the IBC. It's unclear if lightning protection is worth the risk.

This building will be for animals and their feed only. The tractors, fuel, & oils will go in a different building.

Thanks again, Dave
 
(quoted from post at 23:53:10 12/27/20) Pay your insurance company for appropriate insurance that takes into account the above safety factors. Jim
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If you build in an area with no requirement for a building permit, no inspections and no requirement to do anything to "code",
Will an insurance company pay off when they find no confirmation that any of the above was done to any acceptable level?
 
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