Fire Safety in your Chicken Coop & Barn - IMPORTANT!

[aoxa]

You really don't need heat in a coop, ventilation is much more important. Chickens have nice warm feathers grown to handle the cold. If you provide supplemental heat their feathers won't grow as thick and if there's a power outage they could suffer then from lack of heat they are used to.

I would think that the dust in a chicken coop might set off a smoke alarm, I beleive they operate by detecting the particulate in the smoke.

You're right on that. I only heat chicks. None of my chickens had heat lamps. I had 1 heat lamp running on the chicks, and that is not what caused the fire.

Aoxa - you are unknowingly making a huge difference in so many people's lives. And I thank you for that. My uncles dairy barn fire was caused from electric arcing and he lost everything also.
My house fire was also caused by arcing but it never tripped the breaker. The fire investigator said it had arced 6 hr before causing the fire. We were asleep for 4 of those hours. Didn't set smoke alarms off either. There was no visible sign of a fire before I left for work except an acrid smell. It had been below 0 for a week

DH is a volunteer fireman. When his scanner goes off, the local news hears the scans also. We literally had to throw the newsman out as he was so overbearing.

One thing I didn't know was that we could have insured our house for it's tax value. That's never been explained until after the fire. And it wouldn't have cost much more. Still praying for you and Susan. So excited watching your ideas turn to plans. Sue

I'm not sure what the acrid smell is. Care to explain?

The newspapers did not catch wind of our fire. Not sure why. We are considering releasing the story to the same reporter that we had a front page article in the paper on last summer about our giant egg. If we could just get more people to be aware... That's all I want.

 

[aoxa]

Sorry to hear about your loss. Thanks for sharing though because I believe many will now take a look at their heating and lighting solutions and figure out if they are dangerous or not. We too had a barn fire on January 20th of this year. Fortunately we lost no living things as our chickens are in their own separate coop well away from the barn and our dogs are house dogs but we did lose my wife's SUV, our Harley, and every tool and piece of equipment I've accumulated over the last 25 years.

This is all that is left of our 24' X 40' 3-1/2 car pole barn garage. Folks PLEASE check your homeowners insurance policy and make sure your seperate buildings on your property have enough insurance to pay for re-building. We did not. Our policy only covered our barn for 10% of what our home was insured for, which was not even close to what is going to take to re-build it. Like I said, we were fortunate to not lose any pets or people but our rough estimate (we're still trying to remember everything we had and list it) is that we lost about $80,000 in tools and equipment which is a joy in it's self to get replaced because the insurance doesn't give you enough money up front to replace everything at full cost. They use a depreciated value which means you get to go buy your new items for full cost, then submit your receipt to them and wait for them to re-imburse you for the difference. We will more than likely not be able to replace everything we had.

I'm sorry about your loss as well. Especially since your insurance was so low. Our barn was insured well thank God. We can rebuild, but our original barn would have cost more to build. The stuff inside it is all replaceable except the livestock itself, which is devastating. We spent so much money on them. It just makes me sick. Even if it did cover them, it would have never replaced them. We had some birds in there that were like dogs to us.

Oh and our Clementine who just turned 1 year old was in there. RIP sweet girl.

 

[marritimer]

Very sorry to hear about your loss. An acrid smell is very distinct like burning electrical insulation or burnt gunpowder. You will recognise it as soon as you smell it. I'll be watching your posts and following your progress. Wish there was some way to help, In this worldwide community, we're practically neighbors. Best wishes and condonances to you and your family!

 

[Eggcessive]

Justine, again so sorry for your loss of your barn and those great animals, but I am glad you took the time to post about fire safety. I have read of at least 3 coop fires here on BYC in just the past week.

 

[Sally8]

Very sorry to hear about your loss. An acrid smell is very distinct like burning electrical insulation or burnt gunpowder. You will recognise it as soon as you smell it. I'll be watching your posts and following your progress. Wish there was some way to help, In this worldwide community, we're practically neighbors. Best wishes and condonances to you and your family!

Thanks, I wasn't sure I could describe it. It wasn't a plastic smell or even a lot like gun powder. You bet I'll know the smell. If and when I ever come close, I'll let you know. We had a new furnace put in earlier that year. It was a new home to us. I thought it was that. We moved in at the end of March and had the fire Dec 20. Whatever happened to the house inspector, I'll never know. The previous owner was a licensed electrician. Under the house was a crawl space and had a junction box with way too many wires going in and it was never covered. Not sure why it didn't trip the breaker box. We were definitely being watched over.

If Mike Holmes shows up to help I may have to get a passport! lol

 

[CoopChick719]

Dear Aoxa,

I am so very sorry for your devastating losses! I had just been on the Les Farms site the day before the fire drooling over your lovely farm. Thank you so much for posting the warning list. I am going to dust my coop today and take a look at everything.

Again terribly, terribly sorry for your losses! Will be keeping you all at Les Farms in my thoughts & prayers.

Thinking of you,
CoopChick

 

[Gifa]

Ugh... so heartbreaking... my heart hurts for those poor babies... I don't know how you are not inconsolable... I honestly would be crying for months over something like this.

 

[ClothespinQueen]

This is all that is left of our 24' X 40' 3-1/2 car pole barn garage. Folks PLEASE check your homeowners insurance policy and make sure your seperate buildings on your property have enough insurance to pay for re-building. We did not. Our policy only covered our barn for 10% of what our home was insured for, which was not even close to what is going to take to re-build it. Like I said, we were fortunate to not lose any pets or people but our rough estimate (we're still trying to remember everything we had and list it) is that we lost about $80,000 in tools and equipment which is a joy in it's self to get replaced because the insurance doesn't give you enough money up front to replace everything at full cost. They use a depreciated value which means you get to go buy your new items for full cost, then submit your receipt to them and wait for them to re-imburse you for the difference. We will more than likely not be able to replace everything we had.

IF you can - we strongly suggest USAA homeowners insurance. We luckily have them (still!) and have deep insurance love for them. And this is after going through the worst .... they were wonderful the entire way through. Ernndbrtt is right, you really need to check your policy and perhaps have seperate coverage for expensive stuff like barns/tools. Most insurance agencies will pay cash of about 25% of insured value. Anything beyond that you have to itemize. It is a depreciated value too - so if you want the entire cash vallue of your policy you really need to be able to account for about 150% of value in items lost. Needless to say, you're likely still going to come up short even if you do manage to max out the money reimbursed to you. And, as he said, many agencies expect you to buy the items new, then submit receipts and then they'll give you the money. Which is lousy because what if you decide that you don't actually need 5 hammers but that's what you were insured for before? With us, we had a rather dramatic reprioritization of "stuff"... and didn't replace most of what we lost. (I still don't own a CD player and only own 4 CDs total and only at most 10 books - and that is all I ever want now.) And to maximize what money we did get, we utilized the very generous donations from friends/family and total strangers. Even with good insurance, this is still a CRAZy expensive experience. USAA luckily gives out a cash check for 75% of the insured value and then if you want the rest, you itemize... and that is taking most folks over a year to get through. We could have used the cash to be sure, but sanity won out and we took the 75% and ran. We were done with our claim within 2 months. I have friends who 1 1/2 years later are still working through the insurance hell. Insurance is the one thing that you don't want to go cheap on (though USAA is cheaper than similiar quality plans)... sure, you hope you'll never need it and you might save a few bucks by going with lower level stuff... but when the sky falls, and it can always fall, you really don't want to be wishing that you'd antied up for a better plan. Just saying.

Oh, and if you want to know which insurance agencies are good and which to avoid? Go to a recent disaster area and ask around. Our little town has a bunch of very strong opinions on this - as I would guess the Sandy storm folks do too...

 

[ClothespinQueen]

You really don't need heat in a coop, ventilation is much more important. Chickens have nice warm feathers grown to handle the cold. If you provide supplemental heat their feathers won't grow as thick and if there's a power outage they could suffer then from lack of heat they are used to.

I would think that the dust in a chicken coop might set off a smoke alarm, I beleive they operate by detecting the particulate in the smoke.

I would only use the heat during a good cold snap for Texas... which wont seem like anything to the frozen north folks. Ventilation won't be an issue either, the open side of the coop should provide more than enough ventilation! Our issue really is heat here in Texas (at least in the southern part) but it does get cold occasionally in the winter, like down into the 20s a few nights in a row every so often in the winter. Might still run a lamp out there for those few nights... just have to see how the girls do this winter. A local friend does this for her open air coop and says it helps... we'll see.

 

[aoxa]

IF you can - we strongly suggest USAA homeowners insurance. We luckily have them (still!) and have deep insurance love for them. And this is after going through the worst .... they were wonderful the entire way through. Ernndbrtt is right, you really need to check your policy and perhaps have seperate coverage for expensive stuff like barns/tools. Most insurance agencies will pay cash of about 25% of insured value. Anything beyond that you have to itemize. It is a depreciated value too - so if you want the entire cash vallue of your policy you really need to be able to account for about 150% of value in items lost. Needless to say, you're likely still going to come up short even if you do manage to max out the money reimbursed to you. And, as he said, many agencies expect you to buy the items new, then submit receipts and then they'll give you the money. Which is lousy because what if you decide that you don't actually need 5 hammers but that's what you were insured for before? With us, we had a rather dramatic reprioritization of "stuff"... and didn't replace most of what we lost. (I still don't own a CD player and only own 4 CDs total and only at most 10 books - and that is all I ever want now.) And to maximize what money we did get, we utilized the very generous donations from friends/family and total strangers. Even with good insurance, this is still a CRAZy expensive experience. USAA luckily gives out a cash check for 75% of the insured value and then if you want the rest, you itemize... and that is taking most folks over a year to get through. We could have used the cash to be sure, but sanity won out and we took the 75% and ran. We were done with our claim within 2 months. I have friends who 1 1/2 years later are still working through the insurance hell. Insurance is the one thing that you don't want to go cheap on (though USAA is cheaper than similiar quality plans)... sure, you hope you'll never need it and you might save a few bucks by going with lower level stuff... but when the sky falls, and it can always fall, you really don't want to be wishing that you'd antied up for a better plan. Just saying.

Oh, and if you want to know which insurance agencies are good and which to avoid? Go to a recent disaster area and ask around. Our little town has a bunch of very strong opinions on this - as I would guess the Sandy storm folks do too...

I'm lucky on the items. We are all under replacement value. If we rebuy what we lost, they pay the difference between the depreciated value and the value to replace it. Not so much so with the barn itself. There is a max amount on that..

I'm not going to recommend for or against my insurance company until we have everything under control, but they have been very good so far. Here's hoping it doesn't take forever to rebuild.