Install some smart fire/smoke detectors so they can notify you if something happens (it likely won’t)

I have everything on UPS’s, my Synology NAS contacts me if there’s an issue, etc. My fear of fire stemmed from being out of town when a co-worker texted to tell me my apartment building was on fire. Luckily, my unit was fine, but not so the people in back. The fire was started by idiots smoking on the rooftop deck. After that I installed cameras so I could see what was going on. But I don’t worry about my equipment per se. As others have suggested, there’s all sorts of things that can start a fire, large appliances, hot water heater, wiring in the walls, flames from the house next door, burglars, arsonists, plane crashes, ghosts, zombies, etc. You will never be safe! Bwhahahahahaha! Happy Halloween!

I don’t worry about fires and stuff because I have a lot more insurance than I do stuff.

I see your comments are being downvoted but I have a different perspective on this.

First I get why the downvotes are there. You can’t really go into an aviation community as a fighter pilot and be like, I’m afraid whatever random commercial airplane I’m on is just going to crash. I mean you could- I’ve seen it here on Reddit - but, many in the community are going to look at it a bit strangely. Perhaps understandably so from their perspective.

Here’s the thing, though. They’re not you, and you’re not necessarily wrong to feel the way you do.

First you’ve got to acknowledge the reality of the situation and understand the actual risk. Once you can separate the facts from the irrational fear, you’re not wrong on this.

Now, on the irrational fear part, I’d say: address it!

This subreddit has no requirement to justify your setup. If there were, almost no one would be posting here. Beyond that though, the whole point of this sub is to explore, build and share own lab. That lab can be whatever. There’s people here with 100GbE. There’s people here with dozens of cores. There’s people here running large tape backups. And they’re all doing all kinds of things from Plex to ai to whatever. I could go on. Again, no one has to defend it.

So if you look at your lab and say to yourself- I really don’t like the idea of a fire, and maybe it wouldn’t happen, but wouldn’t it be cool if I had something where I never had to worry about the smallest chance of it happening? Then this sub is the perfect place to explore addressing it: spec and buy the right hardware. Design and integrate monitoring and protection systems into it. Tie it all into home assistant or whatever. Then come back and share what you came up with.

As long as you can have a handle on the reality of the situation, you’re good. After all, there’s people here with HA setups for their lab - that they do no production…or dev… on. There’s people that run ECC for fun. There’s people that have more than one or two (dozen) TBs more than they can publicly defend…

Again, if you feel the concern, do something about it and share what you’ve done. Just don’t let it own you.

I don’t think it’s so irrational. Maybe a bit paranoid, but I had a client whose house burned down because they had one of the APC recalled power strips/surge protector. Someone even died in the house fire, not to mention the loss of the house and its contents. Displacing the family for a couple years, etc.

There’s only so far you can go tho. Take proper measures that satisfy your concerns and be on with your life. Hell, your house could be struck by lighting. Or freak accident where a home heating oil truck plows into your house and explodes. Or maybe a mouse chews through some electrical wire in you walls. Can’t prevent everything, but at least get a handle on things you can. Connected smoke detector, fire extinguisher, and an easy path from entrance to the computer/server for first responders if the worse happens. Idk imho there are plenty of other things to worry about.

UL rated, I don’t worry. There are a thousand other things which could and do cause fire. Hope you never have kids they’re a vastly more likely source of home fires as well. Your odds of being stuck by lightening are greater. And if you strip away the kitchen as the majority of home fires your odds of being stuck by lightening in a single year isn’t that far off. Yes this is a completely irrational fear.

Lol I kill most devices and water when I vaca. All my pis and nas and such are offline now and will turn back on when home!

I thought about a similar problem when I bought a 4080 for my gaming rig. I was positive I got the power connector pushed all the way in. And I do leave my pc on when I’m not at home. I only shut down if I know I won’t be able to use it for a day or two. But your fears are legitimate.

I share the same (or similar) fear, but for slightly different reasons. Let me explain. My homelab started as a case missing project. I had some leftover components and an old computer case. In order to make it work/fit, I had to butcher an old PSU. Everything worked and I started upgrading. Now it’s running my UnRaid server. If I planned to have it running 24/7 I would definitely use some better PSU. And until I actually upgrade it (to something which is, at least, not opened with manually spliced wires) I don’t completely trust it.

I totally feel you on this. In my case I got into homelab after also getting into 3d printing, a hobby that really could be a fire hazard if something went awry, and my brain has wrongly filed my new hobby under “all hobby things that run continuously are a fire hazard”, even though in reality the risk here is basically zero. It probably doesn’t help that when I got my first 1u server I only plugged in one of the redundant power supplies and the other popped and let out the magic smoke.

If you feel that your equipment is that questionable that it could catch fire at any moment, it’s time to replace your hardware.

Grab a can of compressed air and blow everything out once a year to reduce the risk of combustion. If you’re worried about things shorting out: do you have some questionable sata power splitters that need to be replaced? Anything like that you’ll replace all of them for $50, so just do it for peace of mind.

Don’t use the cheapest worst power supplies, use something that’s been reviewed and known to have working over-current protection which will cut the power should something go wrong.

And, as a last resort, find some kind of smart smoke sectors (or way to monitor audio/broadcast from smoke detectors) and a trust worthy smart power plug (with power monitoring) that you can connect all your gear to, so you can set up some automation to tell you if the alarm goes off, and either turn off the power automatically or have a way to remotely turn off the smart plug.

The smoke alarms we have, are 4 that communicate wirelessly between them, so they all go off together. Let Home Assistant monitor for that freq and you know if any smoke alarms go off.

Get yourself a couple of these. Put them near utilities and equipment. Only activated by fire.

https://www.passivefirewarehouse.com.au/the-fire-ball-by-ELIDE-FIRE

Back when my homelab was a simple Pentium 1, I somehow had a PC Speaker melt down while I was out of the house.

Since then, it’s been a constant worry that something will catch fire while I’m not at home.

One of the reasons why I run monitoring, so I can check on the status of things.

Not even an ADSL modem caught fire and that was hit by lightning so good that it partially melted. The power adapter was varm afterwards but not critically so

The only stuff I have ever had catch fire in over 20 years if doing this were old crt’s and tv’s. So I just never used to leave those on when leaving the house. I have yet to experience an lcd failure. I have had power supply failures including Apple laptops but they just let the magic smoke out.