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Here’s to the People that got Blowed Up
By Jonathan | April 25, 2008 at 12:08 pm
The year was 2002. It was a September weekend at the University of Cincinnati and Ed, Ben, and I were all moving into our new dorm room located in Sawyer Hall (a quick interruption: Sawyer has since been knocked to the ground, a decision that was a long time coming…that place was a piece). This dorm room was different from last year; it was apartment style with a stove, refrigerator, and a balcony. Balcony…seems like a perfect place for a grill, right? Absolutely!
Wait – they’re going to let college students have open flames in a dorm? Heck no, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I picked up a $20 propane powered mini grill to use at school. It worked out alright…except when Ed bought the cheap meat from Kro-Ghetto and we had three-foot flames in your face…but nonetheless, we never caused any damage. Burgers, hot dogs, chicken, steak, we did it all. That was until that fateful day…
The smoke was thick and pouring over the balcony. We had the windows open in the dorm and some of the smoke started moving inside. Whoops, better shut those windows.
(knock, knock)
Aw, crap. “Beard, get the door!”
And that was the end of that.
So what brings up this story? Well, earlier in the week I received a notice from the managers at the lovely Pinnacle Pointe Apartments complex bringing our attention to the fact that the Green Township Fire Department had noticed that a number of people in the complex had grills out on their balconies. In 2005 the Ohio Fire Code was modified to add sections 308.3.1 and 308.3.1.1. To save you the trouble of looking this stuff up yourself, here’s the general idea: open flames are not allowed within ten feet of combustible construction in dwellings that consist of more than two families, ie, apartment complex balconies made of wood. In addition, liquid petroleum fuel tanks with a water capacity greater than 2.5 pounds are also banned from the same ten feet of combustible building material. To put that in perspective, your standard propane tank is 20 gallons.
My guess is that this law was created to help people from blowing themselves up and causing damage to other people’s personal property. Thanks morons, for ruining it for everyone else.
This obviously means that I have to do something with my propane tanks to avoid getting a citation from the Green Township Fire Department. Fine. Done. Propane tanks gone. Stupid State of Ohio looking out for the dumb people.
Since the law says nothing specifically about storing a grill, but only talks about operating it with big liquid petroleum fuel tanks, do you think the Green Township Fire Department will write me a citation? I’m not getting rid of the grill, are you kidding me? I live in an apartment…what am I supposed to do with it? It will remain covered, on my balcony until we move out. The propane tanks are gone, satisfying 308.3.1.1. Since I have no propane I can’t operate the grill and create an open flame, that satisfies 308.3.1. So how long until they write me a citation?
What should happen at an intersection when a stop light is not working?
- Faster traffic has the right away (0.0%, 0 Votes)
- Proceed as normal (0.0%, 0 Votes)
- Four-way stop (85.0%, 17 Votes)
- Two-way stop (0.0%, 0 Votes)
- Bumper cars (15.0%, 3 Votes)
Total Voters: 20
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Topics: UC, story | 1 Comment »
April 26th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
5 miles, ha. I just started running again and could probably do about 3.5 in 35 minutes though hopefully will progress as the summer goes along. After receiving inspiration from your picture frame I’m considering making our old pc into a linux system that can hook up to a new HDTV (we don’t have YET). I would want it to rip netflix movies to divx to watch them on the new tv, maybe do a photoslide, music, and even backup files from our new system. One being easy, ten being apartment complex catches on fire from grill, where would you rank this project?