That's what pisses me HH. I'm about as out there as you can get in NY and still keep livestock. Nearest neighbor is 2 1/2 miles, village is around 28 and is no more than a feed store, a bar, a ma & pa and a dozen houses with the satellite fire station containing the rescue truck. The "big" village with the school is 62 miles away! I paid for that with the fire though, waiting on the fire crew.
I used to use the area above the office for storage but quit that practice a decade or so ago. I power wash the barn, including ( or especially) the upper reaches, to limit build-up of dust, dirt, bird droppings (though I have(or had) ways of preventing birds) and such, but that area and above the tack room didn't get reached as easily. I didn't lock the barn to provide access in event of an emergency. Didn't think I had to worry so much way out here. Even so, I'm armed pretty regularly as well. A habit from being in the service so long more than anything else really.
The Marshall and Arson team have no answers yet of course, and wouldn't tell me if they did. My local Fire Chief though, who's a close friend, has told me they found several bent spoons, a melted radio, burned remains of 'Brillo' pad boxes, glass pipes and spray cans, and a burned back pack. Looks like they were into everything. He also said there were whiskey bottles and a lot of cigarette butts. He implied that was the point of origin for the fire. We'll see. If so, this will change my insurance pay-out btw.
sw
That sounds like a large group. Spoons go with IV users and IV users are usually well past the huffing (spray can) stage. Brillo and glass pipe are crack kinda things. Even if they had nothing at all to do with the fire, you have some problem neighbors.
When you are rebuilt, look i to a carefully placed Wyze camera.
07-20-2019, 07:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-20-2019, 07:29 PM by heavyhorse.)
Trail cams are a good choice, and not being web/wifi/IoT are not hackable and go anywhere, pretty cheap too. Get the invisible kind so there's no visible or red light.
Will your insurance be more or less if druggies are responsible?
What have you found that's legal and works for preventing birds? This is the first year that I've had near-total success, but, um, a bit off-label......
I wonder if it's possible to tell how long any of that stuff had been there.
Option 1: You had a small crowd of diverse users that night (I can't see one person doing all that stuff at once and remaining agile enough to escape the flames. Or even alive).
Option 2: A transient, migrant, student, worker, contractor employee, has been going there for a week, month, year. Maybe not even there that night; the ether leaked out and ignited.
Quote:
47 minutes ago, heavyhorse said:
I wonder if it's possible to tell how long any of that stuff had been there.
Option 1: You had a small crowd of diverse users that night (I can't see one person doing all that stuff at once and remaining agile enough to escape the flames. Or even alive).
Option 2: A transient, migrant, student, worker, contractor employee, has been going there for a week, month, year. Maybe not even there that night; the ether leaked out and ignited.
Forget Option 2. "several bent spoons" Addicts have their personal spoon and don't need more than one. Some local kids were using it as a shooting gallery. Addicts are very much creatures of habit. They will be back in time.
Quote:
21 hours ago, caikgoch said:
Forget Option 2. "several bent spoons" Addicts have their personal spoon and don't need more than one. Some local kids were using it as a shooting gallery. Addicts are very much creatures of habit. They will be back in time.
I'm with caikgoch here, which is why I'm so upset about it. These are folks I've opened my farm to, the local kids. Always welcome and I've been always willing to help out. Not necessarily the same ones, but who knows? The mix of things also points to a bunch of 'experimenters' to me, a little bit of this, a little of that. Room up there for two or three at a time, so it was over a period of time I think and the same few kids.
I'm already designing the barn restore a bit different than it was ( have to restore the horse barn, not rebuild per insurance) eliminating the overhead areas on the office and tack room and adding cameras beyond the foaling and sheep stalls. The alarm system and design of the barn itself probably saved the horses & sheep and will remain unchanged. I'm looking at a metal roof though and sprinkler system. Should add cameras from the road in. That's a bit of territory though.
There's a Mennonite family I sell hay to about 10 miles up the mountain. 2 days ago the father came down to see me about the hay barn and my burned machinery and we made a handshake deal. For cleaning up the machine shed and getting it's contents (except 1 tractor & the bobcat), he rebuilds the hay barn, duck coop and 4 outbuildings. His whole extended family has been here since! My tractor & bobcat are up by the house, duck coop is built, outbuildings completed, and machine shed damned near empty and removed. Poles are up for new hay barn well past the practice ring now. These folks don't fool around.
I'm back in the house, after cutting electric to all other areas and completely rewiring the porch and mudroom/ laundry. Also had to sever circuits from backup generator to each building. Electric will have to be redone and inspected to each building now though.
If the 'druggies' are the fires cause, it's arson, and the pay-out to me increases under my policy. Still doesn't cover my losses, but I'm compensating where I can.
sw
all i can offer is my condolences lost a fantastic truck and my equipment shed filled with tons of specialty equipment from 30yrs as a contractor total loss, insurance loophoes kept them paying anything, luckily the fire department kept the house from going up out buildings are specialty insurance
On the subject of surveillance cameras and such, my neighbor has a motion detector placed out of sight near the driveway. It just chimes when something big enough goes by. Not sure how helpful that might be; it might require hard-wiring.
Now, what if one of those could be powered by the electric fence, and also use the fence-wire as a signal line? That'd be a custom circuit, I'm sure, but probably not beyond the tech skills of someone on this board.
07-24-2019, 10:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-24-2019, 10:38 PM by ferritlove.)
Putting signal on and feeding from intermittent 9000 volts is a challenge. It might just be easier and cheaper to run some 12 volt exterior grade low voltage wiring along the base of the fence. Then do wireless back to a base-station. I'm just an electronics hobbyist, so take that for what it's worth. I've got 5 wireless cameras in my barn, pasture and paddock put together with IR sensitive cameras and Raspberry PI zero-w single-board computers - I can stream the feeds on a web browser at home or abroad. It makes checking up on critters easier on those cold winter nights and when out of town... having someone babysitting.
07-25-2019, 12:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2019, 12:38 PM by heavyhorse.)
I have tried powering a load as tiny as a voltmeter from an electric fence. All the "safe" ag dept approved fence machines use a pulse of a few thousand volts m/l (the sheep ones up to 12,000v to arc through the wool), but the pulse is literally only a millionth of a second long. So powering a longer duration load of only 1 ma (1/1000 amp) would require a draw of 1000 amps from the fencer for 1 millionth of a second. (Physics will bite you in the ass every time...) The typical mains-powered fencer starts to load down pretty badly at a 30 amp load. So the power just isn't there for continuous loads. All of the fence power indicators either only draw power for a millionth of a second (neon bulb flasher) or have their own power source to run the electronics (volt meter).
I have also run cable to power PIR sensors. Total fail. Every rodent for a mile in all directions comes to dig up and chew through your cable. Lightning anywhere within a similar radius will induce a voltage on the cable back to your house (nice fireball and bang).
The only thing that seems even slightly operable is battery-powered PIR detectors. But they are extremely prone to false alarms; birds closer to the detector sets it off, squirrels, sun flashing on leaves, etc. And this: car bodies are generally the same temp as ambient if they have been driving through the wind. Glass blocks IR so a warm interior is not detected. You need a body temperature to set the detector off. And a fairly unobstructed line-of-sight back to your house to get anywhere near the "up to" 300 or 400 feet range advertised. The good news is they are fairly cheap, $20 to $100 or so, so doesn't hurt to try. But mine sit unused; after the first hundred or so times of jumping out of bed it gets a bit old.
Barking dogs are probably the best detectors, though they are prone to false alarms too, and can be high maintenance sometimes. But still, they are just so nice to have around.....
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