SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20150328-79794-2147434159. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Generac 01669-0 ("GENERAC" by Briggs & Stratton, 5000 Watt rated Generator, pull start, wheeled.). Incident: This generator is used for intermittent power supply at my farm, to run coffee processing equipment. I purchased it from Costco, and first put it into service in July 2005. It probably has about 300 hours of run-time, up until this date, (March 2015) Typically, I roll it out of it's locked storage room in my "barn" to a roofed open-sided work area; check it for fuel, oil, etc. It is a manual start unit, so I start it, and connect heavy extension cords to it to run a gas-fired roaster, and it's blower, also lights in the barn work-area. I've also used it to run power saws and other tools, and a small "buzz box" stick welder. I've had no problems with in before now, except it does not run well on alcohol based gasoline, so I purchase non-OH Gasoline for it and my other small engines. It has a 5 gallon tank over the large alternator unit with a shut-off valve beneath the tank, and a rubber hose leading to the carburetor of the 10 hp Briggs & Stratton engine. On Mar. 22, 2015, I setup the generator as usual, started it, and used it to arc-weld a brace from my disc harrow that had snapped, and a heavy-duty grinder to prep and finish off the repair area. Both pieces of equipment throw off a lot of sparks when they're being used. After I was done, I stopped the unit, by shutting off the valve beneath the gas tank. I noticed it was wet and dripping but seemed to stop after I turned off the valve. I cooled the unit down, then put it away in its locked storage room, thinking I'd take a look at it later, believing it was the "ball" valve that was leaking. The next day, when I went to