Cake "congestion" precautions?

[tustinfarm]

Normally I use the end of a dock every 4th of July for some cakes and shells. The quantity keeps increasing up each year, and I have now reached the point where the dock will be quite congested with cakes and racks. I've always tried to spread things out as much as possible to prevent stray ignition. Shooting a mixture of 1.4g consumer and 1.4 professional items. Fire everything with ematch and remote control. But I am wondering if there are any tricks to preventing ignition surprises when cakes are packed very close together or touching. I suppose there is some less need for bracing the cakes when they could literally be taped into bundles with ductape. On the racks I typically use Al foil to reduce ignition surprises, despite the mess afterwards.

[MontanaMike]

Given the number of cakes that turn into a full-blown conflagration after they finish, I expect you might have a real problem if you have too many cakes too close together...foil or no foil.

We do our show on a field, and we use the 10' initiators so we can spread things out as far as possible from each other. Still it seems like every year, SOMEthing goes up at the wrong time. Fountains are especially prone to starting their neighbors on fire. This year I'm trying to avoid that by adding 25 feet of scab wire into all of my fountains' initiator wires.

[tustinfarm]

Yeah, the tendency of cakes to flare up as the cardboard burns afterwards is my nemesis...the best I can do is to position them in zones that are going to be fired in a similar section of the show sequence. It also occurs to me that for cakes that have to physically touch I essentially need a firewall. A thin slice of material that is fire resistant and also acts as a heat barrier to delay ignition caused by a used cake that goes up in flames. The last remedy would be to pause the sequence long enough for a burning cake to be doused, but that is a risky thing in itself with all of the live material present.

[morrison2951]

I have experienced the occasional unexpected cake firing due to proximity on a dock.... I guess it's better to have fired then not at all, so there's that.

[KDirk]

I kind of like the cake fires, and use them to my advantage. I usually have a burn pile or burn barrel on site during the show, and will throw cakes and other paper waste on/in it so as to reduced the amount of trash that needs disposal after the show is over. Granted, I'm shooting way out in the sticks where there are no ordinances on open burning, and I make a point of not getting plastics and such in the burn waste pile, in order to avoid toxic fumes.