Residential Fire Risk from Home Theater Equipment

Home fire safety is without a doubt a big deal. In the USA there is a good record of home fire safety and numerous governmental and private testing organizations be sure the products we own are safe. Many products are labeled with logo's and declarations of safety by testing agencies like Underwriters Laboratories and TUV Rheinland. When we encounter a product that is not safe, sometimes the results are devastating.

Consumer electronics have many parts that can throw off a spark such as resistors, diodes, transistors and capacitors. Simple overloads or component failure can cause a condition generating tiny fires within your TV or stereo. Voltage spikes due to lightning or electric company troubles are one of the greatest causes of electronic part breakdown. A voltage surge can cause an instantaneous failure or a delayed (or latent) malfunction of those components.

When an electronic part fails, it could simply cease conducting electricity or open the circuit it is in or it could short the circuit. Short circuits could cause excessive heating of the component in question or surrounding circuits. This excessive heating might cause a tiny fire inside your electronic device and is often seen outside the cabinet as a puff of smoke as well as foul odor coming from the piece of equipment.

It is crucial that this small bit of fire can not be utilized to ignite any adjoining combustible material and create a larger and more dangerous fire. In American televisions, the plastic cabinets are manufactured from fire resistant material and despite the fact that it is possible to burn a hole in the cabinet with a torch, the fire goes out right after the torch is removed.

Manufacturing consumer electronics that can't catch fire and burn outside of the cabinet seems not to be a requirement in the USA. We are unknowingly at the mercy of bad engineering, cost cutting manufacturing and testing by testing agencies that do not analyze for possible fire threats. Since these products catch fire in low numbers and sometimes the origin of a residential home fire is undetermined, some of these badly designed and shabbily tested electronic devices go undetected and may be lurking within your home.

The question is; Would you want to know if any of the products in your home had even the merest possibility of starting your house on fire? If consumer electronics could be made so they literally cannot start your house on fire, would you not want to purchase those products? Might you sleep much better realizing that your consumer electronics cannot catch fire, or just probably not catch fire. For me, I choose products that cannot catch fire.

You will find there's web site where a consumer that had a 'whole house' audio unit catch fire within his home and he details his experience with the manufacturer, Russound and the testing organization TUV Rheinland. The Russound CAV caught fire in his home and burned outside the cabinet. He was able to extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher, but if he was not home, his family and home could have been lost.

Rather than admit there was clearly a problem with the product, a Russound executive threatened to sue the customer if he told anybody about the fire. There was a CPSC recall of the product, but the prescribed fix for the CAV audio unit left the combustible material exposed to all the components capable of burning up. Russound and TUV Rheinland instead decided to put a fuse in line with just one component that can discharge a spark.

Neither Russound nor the testing agency, TUV Rheinland inspected the Russound CAV6.6 device that caught fire prior to declaring the defect and prescribing a fix. The question is: Would you sleep better with consumer electronics that cannot catch fire, or products like those built by Russound and tested by TUV Rheinland that probably will not catch fire? You choose. Additional information is available at the It's On Fire Web Site