Do you sleep with your kiln on? - Page 2

Harry · #31 2012-02-18, 5:10pm

Yes, I do it all the time. No big deal. I have a bluebird XL.

cc2 · #32 2012-02-23, 11:09am

My kiln is on a metal table in a cement and brick studio attached to the back of my garage. If I start the annealing cycle I do go on to bed. Generally I work after hours (work til 5 or 6 pm, then an hour drive home)

I've never had an issue with my kiln. However, I know there 'could' be one some day. This is why the metal table and cement/brick building.

alb6094 · #33 2012-02-23, 3:44pm

I'll sleep and do other stuff in the house while it's ramping down (otherwise I'd never get any sleep, lol) but I don't leave the house. Mine is not in my house but in a separate shed out back.

Mitosis Glass · #34 2012-03-15, 6:46am

Quote:

Originally Posted by PittsGlass

I usually have 100lbs of molten glass in a kiln 24/7. It is in its own building that is not attached or close to the house. I also sleep or leave when my kiln is running. I have the luxury of seeing all of my equipment when it is being built. My marbles took about 1 1/2 hrs a piece, so many days there are only 3-5 in there. Those don't do batch anneal well, so every run was a kiln day. I used a lot of CZ's.

In my opinion, a kiln is a space heater inside an insulated case. If leaving a heater on when you sleep makes you worry, the kiln should too. I actually am more afraid of my space heaters.

If it worries you, the Glass Hive kiln is insulated enough that you can skip the vermiculite and just use the kiln and turn it off when you are done after a 30 min soak while you start your bed time routine. I'd just put the fiber blanket up to block the mandrel gap. Since we know glass has an attitude, do a test with one of the already etched beads first. Even my marbles held with turning off the kiln as opposed to fiber blanket or the crock pot of vermiculite. Comfort of the kiln while you work, and the security of it being off when you are sleeping. They won't be annealed, so you'd use your batch program, but they should be whole.

Holding a kiln at 950 for a soak and turning it of IS NOT ANNEALING, it is gambling, and should not be advertised as annealed. It must go through the strain point at a controlled rate or it is going to break prematurely. It may happen on the mandrel or someones wrist, but it is not full strength. I would never sell or buy a bead that did not complete a cycle.

The child component, however, is way out of my element. I take the dog to work with me. Your amazing to me for just being able to juggle all of that in your life.

This is great advice, thank you! I do have vermiculite in a hot crock pot for batch annealing but I haven't done that in over a year due to the size of most of my stuff. This solution sounds perfect, put the pieces in the kiln, let them sit for 1/2 hour or so then shut it off and batch anneal later.

I don't sleep with the kiln ramping down. I will leave the house but not for terribly long and I always unplug it before hitting the sack. I have a digital controller as well but I've heard enough stories of the relays going kaflooie on them and people finding puddles of glass and a shimmering hot kiln.

The studio where I learned glass is in a very old wooden house and they leave their kilns running and ramping down every day without any issue. I'd be paranoid as heck if I ran that place; I'd probably have to set up a sleeping bag and live there.

silverlilly1 · #35 2012-03-15, 7:38am

My daughter is almost two and a half, and the only two words she connects with me working in the garage are "hot" and "bead". Most of the time, I'll melt glass in the evening after she goes to bed at 7 pm. She goes to daycare or Montessori 4 - 5 days a week, so I need to spend the before bed time with her. She's pretty good about going to bed after a day of playing with other kids. When she's home, we keep her naps to about 1:30 to 4 pm max, and she naturally wakes up at about 7 am (this sucks on weekends!).

That being said, I don't have a kiln yet (just ordered from Glass Hive), so I don't know what I'll do then. I normally play until 10 or 10:30 pm, so I don't really want to stay up watching it after that. But I do have an attached garage...

Still, can't wait for that kiln!

Lyssa · #36 2012-03-16, 2:29pm

Silverlilly, I swear, I could have written your post. We must have matching lives, except Emma is starting Montessori in September (hopefully, if she gets in, keep your fingers crossed!).

I just got my Short Guy from the Glass Hive and I LOVE it!

LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE!!!

Which one did you get?

Quote:

Originally Posted by silverlilly1

My daughter is almost two and a half, and the only two words she connects with me working in the garage are "hot" and "bead". Most of the time, I'll melt glass in the evening after she goes to bed at 7 pm. She goes to daycare or Montessori 4 - 5 days a week, so I need to spend the before bed time with her. She's pretty good about going to bed after a day of playing with other kids. When she's home, we keep her naps to about 1:30 to 4 pm max, and she naturally wakes up at about 7 am (this sucks on weekends!).

That being said, I don't have a kiln yet (just ordered from Glass Hive), so I don't know what I'll do then. I normally play until 10 or 10:30 pm, so I don't really want to stay up watching it after that. But I do have an attached garage...

Still, can't wait for that kiln!

lacey · #37 2012-03-19, 8:47am

I sleep with the kiln on and I leave the house with the kiln on. In some ways, I think leaving the house is safer than sleeping with the kiln on. If you think about it, wouldn't you rather be OUT of your house if it burns down instead of sleeping inside it?

I'm also a person that starts the washer, dryer, and dishwasher right before I head out the door.

I do practice safety though. I have a pretty big kiln. One that my husband was tempted to stack stuff ontop of when it wasn’t running (he's notorious for stacking crap on any flat surface he can find). I finally drilled it into his head that HE CAN NEVER, EVER PUT ANYTHING ONTOP OF THE KILN, whether it’s running or not. I read of a school fire once where one of the students put a stack of newspapers ontop of a hot kiln. The newspapers caught fire. I also am overly paranoid about the radius around the kiln: nothing, no walls or anything is within 1 foot of it all the way around, and it sits on a concrete floor.

Lyssa · #38 2012-03-19, 12:20pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by lacey

One that my husband was tempted to stack stuff ontop of when it wasn’t running (he's notorious for stacking crap on any flat surface he can find).

Are we married to the same man?

lacey · #39 2012-03-19, 1:04pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyssa

Are we married to the same man?

Hahaha - I don't know, does yours also like to make what I call "unstable piles" all over the house? Piles of crap that will fall over if you look at it wrong?

Lyssa · #40 2012-03-21, 1:45pm

Yup! I should take a picture of the bookcase he stores his tools on. I'm amazed something hasn't fallen off of there before now and brained my 2 year old.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lacey

Hahaha - I don't know, does yours also like to make what I call "unstable piles" all over the house? Piles of crap that will fall over if you look at it wrong?

jesnbec73 · #41 2012-04-11, 12:00am

I used to sleep with my kiln running but one day I was working on a 1-1/2 inch marble and the controller made a loud pop, shot blue lightning, and then started smoking, sizzling, and burning. I sent the controller to have it replaced and the tech told me it was some kind of relay or transformer burning out (suppsedly due to a power surge). Between the fire in the controller, and the squishy hot marble, I had one hell of a scare. It didn't throw the breaker, just kept on sizzling.
There's good reasons why they tell you not to leave your kiln unattended and if I had been asleep for that, god only knows.

silverlilly1 · #42 2012-04-13, 7:32am

Lyssa - apparently I haven't checked this thread in a while. I got the regular guy. Going to pick it up today.

You'll be amazed at the changes when your daughter goes to Montessori. She's so polite, and sits to wait her turn!

Update:

I sleep with my kiln on. My kiln sits on four fire bricks in the center of my concrete garage floor. I finish up about 9 - 9:30 pm, then turn on the program and go watch tv with my husband. Before bed, I check to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to, then leave it until morning. In the morning, I shut it off, unplug it, bring the beads inside, and go to work.

When you work full time outside the house, and can't get outside until after 7 pm because you're spending time with your two-year-old, you don't have time to make beads and then watch the kiln afterward.

smpalmer85 · #43 2012-05-01, 8:57pm

The first time I ran my kiln through a programmed anneal cycle was new years eve. Don't ever make that mistake. Every firework that night woke me up with a terrified start thinking my oxy tanks or something had exploded.

You'd think after the fifth time my dreams would remember... Nope!

Since my kiln sits on a hardwood workbench a foot from the wall, in my attached garage, I first tested my glass hive kiln for thermal leaks. In an attended firing I cooked some low fire ceramics at about 1500-1700? can't remember. Handled that just fine - although you do NOT want to touch any part of the kiln or even handles at that temperature. Nothing nearby or below got dangerously hot. I was then confident that the boro/soft schedules at much lower temperatures wouldn't be a problem.

If garaging in the evening, and not running a program, I usually manually hold at 960ish and then step slowly to 850 and hold before sealing door with fiber blanket and turning off power before sleep.

I liked someone's suggestion of firebricks though and since I hadn't considered a relay failure I'll look into that. At the moment I'm just playing with small amounts of glass so I'd assumed kiln bricks would eat any liquid glass in the event of an overheat and kiln elements would fail and short before temps got too bad? Is that a bad assumption Pat & company?

Simply Lampwork · #44 2012-05-01, 9:07pm

I'm with you I leave it to soak a half hour then ramp it down for another half hour then off. My problem is I always get a great customer who wants a remake or something special as soon as I shut everything down, so I really need a second kiln. And Pits... I wish I worked with such a large scale in a great studio, I'm just a bead lamp worker so its all little stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PerfectDeb

i have a paragon bluebird, its brick so it holds the heat, i have it programmed for a 12 hour max garage time and when i finish and add the last bead, i give it 30-45 min depending on the size of the bead and then i just switch it off

sometimes if i have a lot of beads or a lot of really big beads i hit the skip segment button and ramp down but not usually

i would never ever leave it on while i'm sleeping or if i leave the house, i have it well away from any walls on a metal trolly but you just never know what might happen

the only time i actually unplug it is during storms, i dont want a power surge to fry the controller

Jenne · #45 2012-05-09, 9:48am

Every single time I check this section of the forums, this thread makes me do a double take. I read the title wrong. You'd think my mind would stop playing tricks after so many times

I sleep with my kiln on, unless there's a storm. I have a Glass Hive and if the power goes out, it'll ramp back up to garage temp when it comes back on (and do so very quickly). We're on a mountain, so we loose power quite a bit in bad weather.

loribeads · #46 2012-06-10, 8:42pm

Yes, I do. Four nights a week for the past 10 years.

Copperrein · #47 2012-06-11, 8:07am

I've spent too many years around electronics to be able to ever trust them. I stay at home, awake, while the kiln runs. I'm also the type that checks three times to make sure appliances are unplugged before leaving on a trip.

Mickip15 · #48 2012-08-12, 6:10pm

I had a hard time getting my husband to allow me to have a kiln because his best friend Fire Safety Intellect told him that a kiln run at the tempuratures that will melt glass can actually get this "Melt the steal beams in my work studio and nobody would be able to walk in to the studio with that kind of heat" so my husband was very much against this. I sat back and said well if they get that hot why are there manufacturers producing these beautiful works of art if nobody can safely come close to one much less use them. So I had to show my husband the multitudes of kilns being sold in the US and Canada and showed him the safety standards of using them, them I brought my husband to the Fire Chief in town and my husband felt that he was only 2 inches tall and stupid enough to listen to a know it all.

Needless to say I have a workshop in my basement that is 40 x 40 feet with 16 foot ceilings. I have brick walls, cement floor and fire proof ceilings. My 2 kilns are on their own circuits and we have a heat detector, smoke detector and carbon monixide detector. I have my kiln running all night when I am sleeping or out, no issue and no worries, as most kilns after power failure resumes the program mine shuts down until I restart it so that I have a proper annealed beads and such.

I am a stay at home mom and mine is ten now. At age 2 my daughter no lnger napped and if I didn't put her to bed any later than 8pm she was asleep whereever I found her playing. I make a lot of time for her but now that she is 10 I am teaching her to torch and play with glass to get her creative side running full tilt but if she hadn't seen me at the torch since she was a newborn I don't know if she would have this interest at all. At the age of 2, I had her glueing glass pieces together or making stone pavers with her art on it and every 2 weeks my husband would go in the drive remove a few pavers and install her work. We are now working on pavers for the backyard, I am hoping by the time she is 20 all the pavers will be her work of arts and then maybe she can start this tradition with her children. As much as you daughter needs your time if you spend it doing something she will grow and mature into not needing so much attention but in wanting to spend time with you.

Micki

hngntuf · #49 2012-08-12, 6:52pm

Very nice story Micki. I hate to follow it with this: Wednesday I worked late and fired up the kiln to batch anneal my pipes, went into the house and got lazy, said "aw hell . . . it'll be OK". Nothing dangerous happened, but I now have a sculpture of about 30 melted pipes. I'm not fast, so that was a several days work for me. Lesson learned.

Stephen

Lyssa · #50 2012-08-14, 3:27pm

Beautiful story Micki! I love your idea of the pavers.

But that sucks, Stephen. Was the sculpture at least pretty?

Quote:

Originally Posted by hngntuf

Very nice story Micki. I hate to follow it with this: Wednesday I worked late and fired up the kiln to batch anneal my pipes, went into the house and got lazy, said "aw hell . . . it'll be OK". Nothing dangerous happened, but I now have a sculpture of about 30 melted pipes. I'm not fast, so that was a several days work for me. Lesson learned.

Stephen

hngntuf · #51 2012-08-14, 3:50pm

Sadly . . . Not even a little.

Stephen

chevygirl70 · #52 2012-08-16, 6:57pm

I have to add to this thread. My best bead gal buddy once had her brand new paragon kiln go bezerk on her because of a fuse in it that went bad. (Again, the kiln was a couple months old and she used it maybe twice a week.) So, while it was at anneal temp and "stable" while she worked - it suddenly shot up to max temp and "scream-beeped" at her while she was working on her torch nearby. It was so goddamned hot when she went to turn the thing off the switch burned her hand. Now, if she had finished her beads and left the house like she usually did during the garage cycle .... I don't even want to imagine.

So no, neither of us leave the house while beads are annealing and no, I don't go to sleep until the kiln is at temp to shut it off and it's unplugged. I was always worried about appliances running while I was gone anyway (major fire happened at the home in branch of my family that keeps me cautious on that) but having that bezerk fuse situation in a new kiln really sealed the safety paranoia for me to be home and awake when the kiln is on.

menty666 · #53 2012-08-23, 8:39pm

I only get to torch after the kids are in bed so I torch from 9 until whenever, then I have it ramp down while I'm asleep. It's up on bricks, there's cement board behind it and I always make sure the area around it is clear before I leave the shop.

Normally if I do a *fusing* cycle, however, I do that during the day but only because I sometimes have to be around to flash vent from 1500 down to 1000.

Teena · #54 2012-08-29, 9:44am

I have 5 little Yorkies, yes there is a doggie door but still, I never leave the house with my kiln on. I do my errands in the am if I know I'm going to bead that day and wait till I get home to turn it on.
I pre set my kiln to anneal 2 hours before I know I will stop beading. That way it will ramp down while I'm cooking dinner watching T.V. etc. At 10:00 pm I will go in to the room and turn the kiln off. It's usually at 250-350 degrees by then and has gone threw the entire ramping system.
I'm to scared to leave on my dishwasher, dryer, clothes washer, anything on when I leave the house.. just good sense..

jenni connolly · #55 2012-08-30, 12:45am

After experiencing a fire in our kitchen from a dishwasher I had put on and then gone to bed, I never leave the kiln operating overnight. I wait until it has done it's cycle and then turn off and unplug. I sometimes go to bed and read for hours while it does this, but I couldn't sleep knowing it was operating. Way too scary if something goes wrong. The fire in kitchen was contained and we are all alive only because I stayed up late reading and heard the crackle of the flames. The cleaning bill was $8000! Not to mention the damage.