Fire safety re; Porsches

[daepp]

I park my beloved early car in my 3 car garage, which is located entirely beneath the living space/bedrooms in my typical two story house.

Also located in this garage is a gas fired hot water heater.

At times I am concerned that the 911 will somehow catch fire, what with all the oil and gas and 37 year old parts etc.

PEr code, every room in my house has smoke alarms. The garage does not. My smoke alarms are all independent of one another.

I want to buy/build a garage smoke alarm that will trigger a horn/alarm upstairs where we sleep. Has anyone ever seen such a thing? Would it be difficult to add some kind of off the shelf transmitter to the garage alarm?

[Hugh R]

First off, is your water heater raised off the ground 18 inches per code?
Second, do you have two vents in your walls/garage door that are at ground level, again per code? The idea is that gas vapors will hug the ground and travel out the vents before they rise to the level of the pilot light on the water heater.

Do a Google search on wireless smoke/heat detectors. Here's one at Lowes

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=84145-65213-0919-9999&lpage=none

[GH85Carrera]

If your house has an alarm system you can have a smoke detector added in. We have one in our house. If the smoke detector is triggered it calls the fire dept & calls the alarm company.

If your water heater is installed to code it should be elevated enough to keep gas fumes from igniting.

If you are real paranoid just disconnect the battery on the 911.

[daepp]

The water heater is indeed raised off the floor and the garage is well vented.

But if anything alights, I want to know about it as early as possible.

I checked first alert and kidde to no avail.

[Zeke]

I thought I have seen smoke detectors that can radio others if there's an alarm. Even if I had, they might not do that reliably from one floor to the next.

Here, I found this, I guess I have seen them:
http://www.firstalert.com/onelink_wireless.php

[RWebb]

I would fix every thing to do with the evap. emissions system right away.

Can any sort of barrier (e.g. FS25 sheetrock walls) be erected between car & heater?

A bigger todo would be to get the heater out of there and put in a tankless hung on the outside of an ext. wall.

[javadog]

I'd suggest a monitored alarm system, not individual detectors. That way you are covered 24/7, whether you're there or not.

JR

[daepp]

As far as monitored goes, while I know it is superb, I am mostly just concerned with the safety of my family.

With respect to emissions etc, all cloth(?) fuel lines have been replaced in the last couple of years. The old clear evap stuff is still in place but does not leak. That said, the car, like most Porsches and VW's I have been around all my life, still smell of gas and oil.

But I also have two other modern cars in the garage, along with a bit of paint etc. Add to that the furnace and the water heater, it just seems like good sense to have some monitoring there that would notify us in the house.

Thanks for the link Milt.

[Amail]

Just burn the garage down and be done with it.

[dad911]

Change all of your fuel lines in the porsche.

Don't store gas in a garage with a gas fired water heater.

Build an enclosure around the water heater, and feed it with fresh outside air.

Home A/C Smoke detectors can be wired together with 3 wire. Then if one goes off, they all make noise.

[vbaron]

It's not recommended to put a smoke detector in the garage, the exhaust fumes may trigger a false alarm. Since its' a 3 car garage, you might be able to place one so that false alarms are minimized. The wireless ones may be a good idea.

Heat detectors are usually placed in garages for that reason. I would also suggest a multi-gas detector, capable of detecting Natural Gas, Propane, and CO:

http://www.firstalert.com/carbon_monoxide_alarms_item.php?pid=26

Vin

[looneybin]

you could add an additional layer of 5/8" type 'x' gyp board to the underside of the ceiling (per code there should already be 1 layer).
while it won't keep the garage from burning in a fire, it would give you additional precious minutes to get out of the house.

[tcar]

Originally Posted by looneybin

you could add an additional layer of 5/8" type 'x' gyp board to the underside of the ceiling (per code there should already be 1 layer).
while it won't keep the garage from burning in a fire, it would give you additional precious minutes to get out of the house.

The garage WALLS are probably supporting the ceiling and the bedroom above.

Just doing the ceiling won't do the trick.

[looneybin]

Originally Posted by tcar

The garage WALLS are probably supporting the ceiling and the bedroom above.

Just doing the ceiling won't do the trick.

fire burns up.
it will keep the floor framing above from burning as fast

[tcar]

I assumed that the water heater and/or car were near walls.

Fire always (almost) travels from floor to floor via the walls. If they have 5/8" rock on them and are fireblocked, that's good

Just offering advice.