First bottle bomb. Any worry of leaking through floor?

[worlddivides]

Hi guys, you may remember I posted a thread a couple weeks ago about my English ales being over-carbonated and that I was worried about them eventually becoming bottle bombs. I had been slowly getting rid of them, but there were 5 or 6 of them left and I was woken up at 3:30am to hear a loud popping sound. I didn't realize it was a bottle bomb at first, but I went to the bathroom and then around 3:50 went into the living room to find that one of the cardboard boxes holding my homebrew bottles had turned dark brown.

Only one bottle had exploded, but I ended up dumping all the rest of the bottles.

My worry is whether the beer seeped through (or will seep through) the carpet to the apartment below me. I want to below that it'll be fine because the bottle exploded inside a cardboard box on top of another cardboard box and that the boxes themselves absorbed most of the moisture before the beer got to the carpet. I think that simply because it didn't seem like there was much liquid on the carpet.

I cleaned the carpet up with paper towels within 30-40 minutes of it happening, but it was a 22 ounce bottle that exploded, so I am a bit worried. Right now the carpet up here looks and feels okay, but I'm worried that tomorrow my downstairs neighbors might have brown ale dripping through their roof.

I did some Google searches for info on this. Such as how fast liquids seep through carpet or through the floor, but I couldn't find anything. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know. Thanks.

I guess it just goes to show that, even though I was being careful, I wasn't being careful enough.

 

[mongoose33]

I'd guess it's unlikely that you'll get seepage below. The cardboard and carpet would have caught most of it. There's a subfloor under the carpet, and if you're not on a seam in that subfloor, it's not going anywhere. If you didn't get a lot out of the carpet, IMO it's unlikely to go further.

 

[worlddivides]

I'd guess it's unlikely that you'll get seepage below. The cardboard and carpet would have caught most of it. There's a subfloor under the carpet, and if you're not on a seam in that subfloor, it's not going anywhere. If you didn't get a lot out of the carpet, IMO it's unlikely to go further.

Yeah, both the cardboard box that contained the exploded bottle was completely soaked and the cardboard box below it was completely soaked (although maybe half as much as the one above it) with the carpet being the least soaked of the three. So I was hoping that meant most of the volume had been absorbed by the cardboard.

My wife woke up this morning and said "Why does the living room smell like baked bread?" I said "A beer bottle exploded" and she said "Well, at least it doesn't smell like beer. Baked bread is a much nicer smell." I was thinking "But it does smell like beer," but I didn't say anything. Heh.

 

[ncbrewer]

I put mine in a plastic bin for conditioning just in case. Probably a good idea.

 

[Calypso]

You're fine, you'd generally have to dump a lot of liquid onto the floor to have it make it through the subfloor. Though, I did once have an upstairs number dump an entire bottle of laundry detergent in their closet without realizing it, and that soaked through and started dripping into my closet.

 

[worlddivides]

I put mine in a plastic bin for conditioning just in case. Probably a good idea.

I bottled these 3 months ago, so I wouldn't exactly consider it "conditioning," but there have been a few times where I've done exactly like you and put the cardboard box in a double garbage bag (or a plastic bin). That's definitely a smart idea when you're unsure of whether it'll overcarbonate or not. I'd say I do it for 5% of batches or so.

You're fine, you'd generally have to dump a lot of liquid onto the floor to have it make it through the subfloor. Though, I did once have an upstairs number dump an entire bottle of laundry detergent in their closet without realizing it, and that soaked through and started dripping into my closet.

Yeah, there was one time I lived in an apartment where I woke up on Christmas morning to find water dripping from the ceiling. I found the apartment directly above mine and apparently their washing machine had broken without them knowing it.

I have no idea how much water it took for that to happen, but it is something I thought about when I was cleaning this morning, even though I thought "I'm probably fine."

 

[catdaddy66]

Bottle bombs can definitely do damage. Last week my brother had a year old sweet stout blow out the base and the bottle shattered the shelf above it! Glass was everywhere but no injuries. It turned into a defacto missile.

Your floor should be fine.

 

[worlddivides]

Bottle bombs can definitely do damage. Last week my brother had a year old sweet stout blow out the base and the bottle shattered the shelf above it! Glass was everywhere but no injuries. It turned into a defacto missile.

Your floor should be fine.

Totally. Luckily mine was inside a cardboard box on top of a cardboard box, but if it'd been on top of our glass dining room table, we wouldn't have a glass table anymore. It would have been nightmarish if it had exploded in my hand, but I had been carrying them with extreme paranoia for the past few weeks.

Shame I didn't dump the 3 or so bottles that had their tabs up before the explosion, but oh well.

 

[kev211]

It wont leak through. Like it was said, it would have to penetrate the boxes, carpet, subfloor and still have enough liquid to make it through the drywall below. And dont forget about carpet padding too