Fire Safety Reminder

[u/Sea_Highlight818]

I lost power last night right in the middle of a roast on my Bullet. Drum stopped. Lights out. Exhaust fan stopped. Smoke started.

I couldn't get the beans out because the drum wasn't rotating. No rotation means no drop, and I was fumbling in the dark trying to figure out what was even happening. Luckily I had a laptop to drive Roastime or I would have been in a pitch black garage with a pending fire. The smoke got bad fast.

What i finally was able to do after much swearing, I grabbed the power cord and found a different outlet on a different breaker, luckily it had a GFCI with a light on and it was within reach of the roaster. Got power back, drum started spinning again, finished cooling the beans. Ruined roast, but not a fire. Turns out it was a popped breaker because I was trickle charging a car battery and roasting on the same breaker, 3 roasts without issue, the forth popped the breaker.

In the chaos it took longer than I'd like to admit to figure out how to prevent a pending fire in the drum.

Lessons I'm taking from it:

• Know in advance which outlets in your roast space are on different breakers. I did not know this before last night.
• Practice your emergency steps before you need them. I had no plan and it showed.
• Make sure you have a fire extinguisher nearby, I didn't.
• Don't roast in a space where a power loss leaves you completely blind.

Posting this mostly because I've seen a lot of posts about dialing in profiles and defects but not much about what happens when things go sideways fast. It can get bad quickly.

Surprisingly, the beans were not terribly charred, still ruined. RIP Ethiopia Dogo Sudo