Battery fix

when charging battery's in the house would it be safer to use a dedicated fire safe bag? I have seen them on ebay in different sizes. It would be safer and less of a worry, containing any explosion but more importantly no risk of a fire, they are fairly cheap and would give you piece of mind especially if you charge during the night.

Good advice there Boz. Where Lipos are concerned, since the maximum charge time is 1 hour at a standard charge, is it really much of a hardship to stick around until the charge is complete?
Nicads are now a thing of the past, or should be, any packs still around must be well past their use by date! With Nimh cells I would recommend paying a little extra and buying Enelope (Sanyo) They are a pleasure to use and never seem to give problems.

Agreed, Boz, but those bags hadn't been invented back then! They are really intended for lipo's, which can burn like a magnesium flare, IF they decided to 'let go'. (Touch wood, none of mine has, yet, although a few have puffed up, and been caught and removed to a safer place while they think about it).
It is less fiddly to charge them on a concrete floor, away from anything that can combust, especially, as I do, you charge several packs at once.
If you use those fire-bags, you have to have a separate one for each pack that is on charge - just in case - as if you have them all in one pack, and a cell decides to conflagrate, you have lost ALL those packs - and that gets expensive!

A caveat if I may, batteries have a finite life, it's well worth keeping a record of when they were charged. Once you start getting close to 1000 it's time to say goodbye. I consider any attempt to revitalise a battery that is going to fly in a model to be foolhardy and dangerous, unless like I do you live 3.5kms from your nearest neighbour! And I still wouldn't do it, models are just too valuable.