header fires are common as weather heats up, & the wheat harvest continues

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Originally Posted by donh54

Pretty common to all brands.
The crop makes a lot of difference. We did chickpeas a few years ago. Had to stop the header every 40 minutes and go over it with the (water) extinguishers.

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Years ago when canola was still called rape, a contractor told me that his previous very expensive header burnt to the ground when he was stripping a crop of rape/canola..

His explanation was that there were fine hairs on the seed that built up somewhere in the header and because they contained oil, they stuck there. He said he emptied the header's fire extinguisher and then emptied the fire extinguisher from his truck but he said all they did was fan the flames. Then all he could do was stand back and watch his quite new header burn to the ground. He blamed the oil content of the fluff that had accumulated.

I believe he stuck to harvesting wheat after that.

Canola doesn't have hairs, neither on the seed nor on the pods and only the seed contains oil. However the pod stems might be considered hairs because they tend to be thin. Canola is a lot safer to harvest than any of the grass crops such as wheat or barley and if there is a header fire then the paddock is far less likely to burn if the header is moved away from unharvested windrows if the canola was windrowed. My canola is windrowed which is done before the stalks and pods have dried then picked-up using a belt (draper) pickup once dry, with both operations very low fire risk.

I might have some of the details confused. It was about 1980.
I am fairly sure it was canola that he mentioned,
I am 100% sure that he said he emptied two fire extinguishers to no avail.

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Originally Posted by bob10

Is there any particular brand of header that is prone to catching fire? Or is it across the board ? May be a foolish question, but I wouldn't know a header from a stump jump plough.

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Easy Bob, the stump jump plough is the smaller of the two, horse drawn and made in Victoria. [biggrin]

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Originally Posted by vnx205

I am 100% sure that he said he emptied two fire extinguishers to no avail.

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I'm not surprised. My fire extinguisher subdued my fire a little as I tried to keep the fire away from the new battery but as soon as the extinguisher emptied the fire flared right back to how it had been. The run to the fire cart seemed to take forever and by the time I returned all that I could do was to try to stop the spread in the stubble. The grain in the almost full fully-enclosed grain tank continued to burn for a couple of hours after the rest was out.

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Originally Posted by V8Ian

Easy Bob, the stump jump plough is the smaller of the two, horse drawn and made in Victoria. [biggrin]

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And still used in Victoria.

Up in QLd we have moved on...[biggrin]

Farm machinery operators are not impressed with impatient drivers.

• More vehicles are on the road than previous years with NSW's bumper harvest
• Heavy vehicle operators say they are frustrated by dangerous car drivers
• The Australian Custom Harvesters Association president wants a national awareness campaign

Farm machinery operators frustrated with impatient drivers during busiest harvest in years - ABC News

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Originally Posted by V8Ian

Easy Bob, the stump jump plough is the smaller of the two, horse drawn and made in Victoria. [biggrin]

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The only horses around these parts are the thoroughbreds at Deagon. Ask them to pull a plough they would throw a hissy fit.[bighmmm]

Geez, what a nightmare! In another life I had a fire start while mowing hay. We had a SWB Land Rover set up with a tank and pump parked near the paddock, but it was a losing battle. Luckily the next door neighbour saw what was happening and came charging over the hill on his tractor pulling a set of disc cultivators, which he was able to use to stop it. I remember spewing my guts up afterwards; not sure if from shock or from running to get to the Land Rover.

'Heart-stopping' header fires increasingly common as weather heats up, harvest continues

Firefighters have responded to 30 machinery fires across New South Wales since October 1 and the Rural Fire Service (RFS) is urging operators to be careful during harvest.

During the last good harvest in 2016–17, before the drought, about 40 headers were lost over the entire season.

Attachment 166592

Header fire near Geraldton destroys a million dollar crop.
Around $1 million worth of unharvested cereal crop has been destroyed by fire in Western Australia's mid west.
Key points:

• A fire on farmland near Geraldton, WA, is understood to have started by machinery
• It burnt through 2,000 ha of scrub, stubble and unharvested crop worth close to $1 million
• The farmers were just days away from harvest

The fire, believed to be started by a harvester, has burnt through 2,000 hectares of land, including bush land, stubble and unharvested crop.




Farmland fire near Geraldton destroys close to $1 million of crop just days before harvest - ABC News