Decking caught fire

[opps]

I finished painting a friends' kitchen and dinning room last Tuesday.

The kitchen fitter started the next day and was hoping to sign off today.

Everything was going swimmingly until yesterday...

Whilst the kitchen fitter was out picking up materials, the decking, which butts up to the back of the house and spans the width of the property, caught fire.

The heat was sufficient to crack the uPVC windows upstairs (both his property and his neighbour), completely melt the guttering and soil pipes/etc, completely melt the kitchen uPVC windows, bow the patio doors, melt the neighbour's garden furniture and blow the render.

The fire brigade turned up quickly enough to ensure that the remaining 85%(?) of the decking didn't catch fire. Thanks to them there was no fire damage to the interior but there is substantial smoke damage and the lack of waste plumbing makes the house uninhabitable.

Decking fires are rare but not unheard of. There was one in Bury 2 weeks ago.

http://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/162...aused_fire_which_damaged_decking_and_windows/

I am not trying to tell anyone how to landscape their garden but don't blindly believe the salesmen who also forgets to tell you that it is green and slippery in late autumn and an ice rink in winter.

And yes I have decking at home...

 

[Notch7]

how did it catch fire?

 

[opps]

Not sure.

The fire brigade said that the most common causes are sparks (possibly from electrical faults) or discarded cigarettes.

The fire didn't start under the decking so it wasn't electrical.

The client (my friend) wasn't there at the time so the cause is unexplained.

I had another client a couple of years ago that had a house fire that was the result of the sun light hitting a makeup mirror and then focusing the beam on the curtains in a spare bedroom. When I relayed that story to a mate in the pub he told me about his TV catching fire after the sunlight was funnelled through a vase on the window sill.