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This is the utility room of cottage #9 on the North End of Hen Island.  Direct your attention to the large white box mounted on the rear wall.  Housed inside that box is an instant hot water heater.

This type of water heater is a demand heater which means that, once lit, a pilot light is constantly burning. When you turn on a hot water faucet in the house, it simultaneously opens a propane-and-water valve to fire up a propane burner.  This in turn heats the water flowing through the heater coils. The propane burner is about the same size you would have in a barbeque gas-cooking grill or an oven broiler.

Now look to the lower left of the water heater.  There you’ll see a bank of batteries used for storage of the solar system.  Not visible in this picture, on the outside wall of this utility room, are two, 100 lb. propane tanks used to fuel the water heater.

Independently, the water heater and the solar systems are each desirable, environmentally-friendly products.Together however, in one shed, the two propane tanks on the outside wall constitute enough explosive to demolish the largest building in the City of Rye.

Here’s how it happens:  someone innocently turns on the hot water faucet in the cottage which causes the water heater to produce more hot water using open flame. As you can see, located less than a foot from the flame, are 12 solar-powered, lead-acid batteries. Lead-acid storage batteries produce hydrogen and oxygen gases when charging and discharging.

Hydrogen mixed with oxygen is highly explosive and can be ignited by any spark or flame. This may explode the battery case and cause a chain reaction in the utility room. Keep in mind that there are twelve batteries not just one, magnifying the force of the explosion by 12.

This a strong possibility by itself; but also note the electrical plugs and boxes just above the batteries.  If one of these boxes short circuits, the same reaction can occur. The manufacturer of this equipment strongly recommends that all installations be performed and inspected by qualified personnel for a reason: These systems are designed to be housed in separate compartments, not in close proximity to each other.

The system in this picture was improperly installed on Hen Island five years ago without any electrical or plumbing permits.  The City of Rye was notified about the many serious electric and propane violations present on Hen Island.

To date the only statement issued by the City of Rye was attributed to the City Manager, Paul Shew, by way of a New York Times article on  September 9th, 2007.  The article read that, quote, “Mr. Shew said no violations were found when Rye's building inspector, along with county health and environmental officials, inspected the island in July,” unquote.

Despite Mr. Shew’s comments, having the batteries, electrical sources, open flames and propane tanks in such close proximity clearly constitutes a dangerous condition and a violation of the building code.