Is there NOTHING they won’t strap a lithium firestarter to?
More than 400,000 solar-powered patio umbrellas sold at Costco have been recalled by authorities after it was announced that the product can overheat and potentially burst into flames. […]
Batteries used in the umbrella to create that sought after “ambiance” are what the agency believes to be causing trouble. They received six reports of the lithium-ion batteries overheating, with three of those reports resulting in “solar panels catching fire while charging via the AC adapter indoors” while two other incidents ended with the umbrella itself becoming ablaze when the solar panel puck overheated and caught fire while attached to the umbrella.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/retailers-weigh-cost-paying-customers-keep-unwanted-items
Target et al say Nah, keep it, here’s your money back. Lol
https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/retailers-weigh-cost-paying-customers-keep-unwanted-items
Isn’t that what Winners is for??!
We bought one. Got a call from Costco and was told. Just take the battery unit off the umbrella and store it in a safe place. That was a month or more ago. Heard nothing since then.
Can I have my old Price club back.
Bring it back to Costco. They’ve got the best return policy of any store I’ve ever shopped at… except maybe Sears who were equally good.
Arty…
Have to Agree with that..100%.
Yep. I was hoping they would have a replacement battery unit.
My fire starter is a Bic lighter. I used it light my cigars. I avoid lithium ion batteries wherever possible.
I joined Price Club mainly for the delicious air aged beef roasts at reasonable prices. And the small surprise lots of great brand name stuff constantly showing up. You almost had to be there two or three times a week or you would miss half the newly arrived electronic throughput being sold out. After Costco took over, the air beef thing was soon gone. When Sam’s Club showed up, in my opinion, Costco revamped to the same level, instead of boosting their “great value at a fair price game” to the max.
Even sadder days ahead, in my opinion.
L – Future news headline: “Used items for sale Flea Markets rival Walmart in sales. Profits used to fund populist parties and citizen digital media throughout Europe and North America”.
“In other news G-7 leaders disappear in a puff of smoke, autopsy results rule it to be due to
natural causes of spontaneous human combustion.”
I wonder if they are CSA “approved”
MADE IN ?????
Batteries used in the umbrella to create that sought after “ambiance”
Isn’t being outside the wanted “ambience”?
The idea is the solar panels charge a battery during the day, and then at night when you’re out on the patio there are LED lights under the umbrella that give off a soft glow.
I’ve had Li-Ion and NiCd rechargeable batteries that I’ve used for literally ten years of deep charging and draining without an issue. The problem here isn’t the batteries specifically, it’s the corner-cutting on materials, shoddy construction and nonexistent QA that comes from outsourcing manufacturing to China.
Riiiiiight … and Elon’s mega super gigga Li-on battery factory in the wastelands outside Reno are now making the magic batteries everyone told us were coming … ten years ago. Yes! The magic batteries that fully charge in 7-minutes and propel your Tesla for 1,100 miles are being made in America RIGHT NOW!!
We … progressive … wishers and hopers were promised! And … we “believed”. Because chemistry and physics are just white colonialist inventions by BIG OIL to hold back the magic batteries.
It’s hard to beat the cheap prices of Chyna.
It’s the magic of slave labour.
When you said “lithium firestarter” I thought of thermo-nuclear weaponry.
Maybe it was too stupid, but I thought it funny. Thermonuclear weapons are made with Lithium, not hydrogen. Modern thermonuclear weapons are Lithium bombs, not Hydrogen bombs. A la Tesla, but MUCH bigger.
Ok, pardon my ignorance, but I have to ask the question: Why would anyone need a solar-powered umbrella? What is the battery supposed to do? How does it “provide ambiance?”
Does the battery automate opening and closing the umbrella as if the user can’t do it under their own power? I mean… what gives? I’ve never heard of this application of solar technology. Who came up with this winning formula, and why would people actually fall for this, and buy this crap?
These are not rhetorical! These are legitimate questions that I would love to hear the answers to.
It is like all the other things to buy. It sounds good until it bursts into flames.
It enable the umbrella to stop the rain when the Sun isn’t shining.
I have setup a few of these for friends.
It’s a series of LED lights under the umbrella built into the framing that give a soft glow with 3 intensity settings.
Similar to ” patio lanterns ” with those cheap tea light candles women are so fond of.
Brings the mood after a few brews to get the ” candle ” lit for wifey to get in the ” mood “.
Soft lighting so it hides a person’s imperfections, wouldn’t be in the ” mood ” if they were under harsh light.
It’s a female thing.
Even better when someone thinks they are getting something for nothing , in this case , energy.
Nothing quite like the ambiance of a burning umbrella … sit back far-enough so the flaming pieces don’t fall in your lap.
Lithium batteries are a great innovation, in some ways. It’s lithium power that has made things like smartphones and drones possible. Lithium batteries are lightweight, and have nearly the same energy density as gasoline – without requiring a heavy combustion engine to liberate that energy. They’re even cheap enough to include in silly products – like patio umbrellas that provide “ambiance”.
But there’s a terrible reckoning coming. Emboldened by the success of small things like cellphones and cordless drills, government officials have been pushing steadily to replace gasoline powered engines with battery powered devices, and that’s a horrible idea. I was shocked the other day when I visited the local Home Depot, and found that nearly all of the lawn mowers, weed trimmers, chain saws, and even, God help us, garden tillers for sale were battery powered. Within the next few years the average suburban garage will have the energy potential of a small bomb stored inside it in a variety of indifferently maintained tools and products.
The battery packs in these things are enormous, and because they’re intended to be price-competitive with small gas engines, they’re guaranteed not to be built to the same standard as the batteries in electric cars. If a 3 watt light puck in a patio umbrella is a fire hazard, imagine the risk inherent in an 80 or 90 watt lawn mower, or a 140 watt garden tiller.
I have friends in a couple of volunteer fire departments, and they’ve expressed similar sentiments. Fortunately house fires are a rarity these days, but a fire in a garage full of battery-powered tools starts as a hazmat situation and escalates to a Level 1 explosion hazard pretty quickly.
And in a few years your house insurance will either have a rider saying it doesn’t cover lithium battery fires, or your house insurance rates will go way way up, or both.
So if I have this right in my short perusal of the article six units went on fire and 400,000 units have been recalled. Meanwhile in another market 1,200 units failed out of a possible 42,000 test units but the product was rolled out and spread around the world and there is no possible way to recall the product. Evidently the logic eludes me, why recall all those units for a failure of six when a failure of 1,200 doesn’t stop the production and distribution of a definitely more lethal product. Do I have that right?
Lawyers …
It has nothing to do with lithium. Electronics have been using lithium batteries for 30 years.
It has everything to do with made in china garbage.
There’s probably some truth to that. I studied the failures of LED bulbs a while back; apparently the leading cause of failure was (then) the wire soldered to connect the eletronic circuit to the LED array. This is done manually in China. Other units, more expensive, which used connectors were much more reliable.
I still don’t get the expected lifetime from most makes.
There’s probably some truth to that. I studied the failures of LED bulbs a while back; apparently the leading cause of failure is the wire soldered to connect the eletronic circuit to the LED array. This is done manually in China. Other units, more expensive, which used connectors were much more reliable.
Maybe I should re-think the whole lithium, solar powered speedo idea I was working on.
Nah, if you give it a pronoun, you can sell a solar powered torpedo to the US Navy.
The battery inflates an artificial … Nevermind … I don’t swing that way