Originally published at: Caught on video: unbelievable dryer explosion wrecks laundromat and narrowly misses customer. Can you guess what caused the blast? | Boing Boing
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Ok, just speculating here- Something causes the initial pressure build-up that pops the door open- then when enough air rushes in you get the first ignition of the contents, then the air-fuel mix goes up.
My first thought is that this is too much to be anything that you could reasonably fit into a dryer- lighters or lithium batteries wouldn’t do that sequence of events or give you that much boom. so I’m leaning towards this being one of those crazy gas dryers, a gas leak building up the pressure to pop the door, then the fuel-air mix exploding once it finds an ignition source.
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Reboot of Young Ones
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The washing machine was a converted Tesla, obviously
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Fuckin’ Hell Fire! That was a lot more destructive than I expected.
Was the explosion caused by one of those Self-drying Teslas?
Edit @lorcan_nagle
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That dude who walked out 15 seconds before it blew better go buy some lottery tickets, he’s the luckiest guy ever!
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Came here just to whine about the bait-clicky title.
shakes fist at cloud Now, get off my lawn!
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Dryer lint, probably as explosive as grain dust on a grain elevator.
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Someone else’s dryer sheets have ruined my day but not like this.
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Climate change caused this.
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Back in the eighties when I was using those dryers, they were all Huebsch Originators. They got good and hot inside. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one explode like that. They run on gas.
There was even a local band named Huebsch Originators.
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I’ve heard stories about cities where gangs would wreck laundromats controlled by rivals (or where the owners didn’t pay protection) by tossing cement into all the washers and setting them going, but this is next-level. If anyone figures out how to reproduce this, the laundromat wars are going to take a new and ugly turn.
I know that some dryers have signs warning you not to tumble dry clothes that have been dry-cleaned (but why would you?) apparently because heating tetrachloroethylene (so-called “dry-cleaning fluid”) is not a terrific idea. It’s reportedly flammable, but I don’t know what concentration or quantity would be needed to produce a blast like this.
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I saw a linked article that said it was a lighter, but didn’t say what kind of lighter. Kind of impressive that small amount of fuel could have caused that.
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Working with firefighters has made me very wary of two items in the household: candles and dryers. When I worked for a city, my department and the fire HQ got moved into a rental building, and several of the guys had, earlier in their careers, worked a fire in that very building. It was started by a dryer fire. Said it was one of the worst fires they had ever worked (they were, no doubt, absolutely thrilled to be stationed in that building).
Interesting to see a picture that showed my office as a blackened, gaping hole in the side of the building, though. They had the picture framed and hung it up in their section of the building.
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It won’t be TCE, that’s non-flammable. It would actually be more likely to put out a fire than start one, as it would interact with a fire in the same way as the halons would. It’s closely related chemical compound carbon tetrachloride used to be used to fight fires as well, until they found out how toxic it was.
And that’s probably the real reason not to tumble dry dry cleaned clothes. Vaporising that much of a fairly nasty compound is not good for anyone nearby, plus it’s breakdown compounds are also not very friendly.
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