Posted by annemarie (212.238.33.13) on July 28, 2000 at 04:56:17:
In Reply to: Reluctance posted by Jen on July 27, 2000 at 18:47:25:
Jen, you can keep oxygen in the house quie easily even if you are a smoker. I only stopped recently
and have 4 large oxy cylinders in my cellar, a large one in my bed room on a trolley, three small ones in my study.
As long as you don't open the valves where there's open fire, and don't smoke while you're on the bottle, no problem.
The only problem occurs when you have a fire caused by something else. If it reaches the bottles they MAY explode, but only after serious overheating, as Ueli pointed out.
In the mean time, the material your sofa base is stuffed with and the fibres in your wall to wall carpeting will fill your living room with absolutely deadly toxic smoke within 70 seconds and form a great incentive for fire to expand throughout your house.
So if you do get a fire from leaving burning cigarettes, the "fire bomb" effect will come only at the very end, when all the damage is already done.
Only thing is (in this country) you have to warn your insurance company, and have a front door sticker for the fire brigade.
Hope this pulls you across the line. O2 is a life saver for so many of us, no side effects and so completely non-addictive.
annemarie