On Sun, 8 Aug 2010 13:52:23 -0400, "jimmy"
wrote:

I recently had a conversation with an insurance adjuster who told me one of
the causes of fires in a home are these box fans...do you have any info
regarding this??

I used a 21 inch fan with slightly beat-up metal case that I had found
on the street as an exhaust fan when I was scraping (sanding) my
parquet floors. It ran 8 hours a day for one or two days and within a
half hour of my finishing the scraping, it "burned" out. But there
was no fire. It just slowed to a stop with maybe a bad smell.

Maybe the extra load, sawdust for 8 or 16 hours caused it to wear out
early.