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Fire suppression system went off at my shop, took 6 hours to reset the whole thing
I run a small auto repair place in Phoenix and a sensor glitch set off the dry chemical fire suppression system last Tuesday. Nobody was hurt and there was no real fire, but that powder gets everywhere and ruins everything it touches. It took me and my tech an entire Saturday to clean all that mess out of the engine bay and swap out filters. The weird part was the alarm company couldn't reset the panel because the wiring was corroded from 15 years of dust buildup. Has anyone else dealt with a false alarm cleanup that cost way more time than expected?
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the_lee15d ago
Wait, did you have to deal with that yellow powder that smells like burnt plastic? I had a similar thing happen at a buddy's garage up in Flagstaff where a faulty heat sensor triggered the system during a welding job. That stuff got into EVERYTHING even the customer's car upholstery somehow. We spent two whole days pulling intake manifolds and scraping powder out of every little crevice. The worst part was the insurance adjuster tried to say it wasn't covered because it was a "maintenance issue" with the sensor. Ended up having to eat a lot of that cleanup cost ourselves.
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elliotadams15d ago
OH man, I gotta say something here. That yellow powder you're talking about is actually from a specific type of dry chemical extinguisher called Monnex, not just a random residue. It's got that burnt plastic smell because it chemically breaks down when it hits flame, and yeah it gets EVERYWHERE like you wouldn't believe. I think your buddy's insurance adjuster was probably wrong about it being a "maintenance issue" since a faulty sensor is usually covered under equipment breakdown policies, not a maintenance exclusion. But I've heard horror stories about those adjusters trying to weasel out of paying for anything they can blame on the shop's upkeep.
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hayes.jake15d ago
Man that's brutal. I hate hearing stories like that where the insurance company tries to find any excuse not to pay out. Two days of scraping that yellow powder out of intake manifolds sounds like a nightmare, I don't know how you guys kept your cool dealing with that. The adjuster calling it a maintenance issue is such a cop out, especially when a faulty sensor is clearly a mechanical failure not something you could have prevented by cleaning it. You guys got screwed big time having to cover that cleanup yourself.
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