[jeffbee]

I just got a new tenant in my rental house and this time I had to add a clause to the lease enumerating brands of lithium-ion batteries the tenant is allowed to keep on the premises. These things are basically grenades that you can buy for $2 on Temu. Stronger regulations needed.

[rollcat]

I'm not a landowner, but (subject to the local laws of course) I imagine a safer course of action would be decent home insurance. Realistically, there's a thousand other ways things can go disastrously wrong, including nothing that could be the tenant's fault (like natural disasters).

Batteries? Picture a fondue going wrong.

[VectorLock]

If you've ever dealt with home insurance you try very hard to not have to deal with home insurance.

To say your goals are cross-aligned with theirs would be an understatement.

[nic547]

I'd like to argue that electric Rechauds are superior anyway. Fuel paste or gas always seems to run out just before you're finished, everything cools down while refilling and then you have to get the fluid up to temperature again. Safety around children or tipsy people is just the bonus on top.

[kragen]

I found out today that the rechargeable batteries in my cordless landline phone are basically fake. They're NiMH AAAs, Highpower brand. I bought replacements because they were dying, and the replacements (rewraps by a domestic importer) weigh twice as much, 13 grams instead of 7, and purport to have 1000mAh capacity instead of the 300 advertised by the Highpower cells. Hmm, maybe that's why the phone wasn't working very well...

But those are (probably!) NiMH. No idea what brand of lions are in this cellphone, my laptop, my other laptop, my MicroPC, my other cellphone, etc.

[MBCook]

How is any tenant possibly supposed to comply with that? Rip every piece of electronics they buy apart to check?

[jeffbee]

It's about highly energetic battery packs for things like bicycles and scooters.

[CaptainOfCoit]

Doesn't the same question apply though? How is the bicycle and scooter owner supposed to find out the exact brand of the cells used, rip apart the pack just because the landlord doesn't have insurance/require tenant to get insurance?

[ReptileMan]

Won't help much. Way too much cheap lithium ion crap with incapsulated batteries is flooding the markets

[jacquesm]

Yes, especially wearables and toys. Those are a real problem. One of my kids was gifted a toy that had an embedded Lithium Ion pouch battery of spectacularly bad quality, the pouch had already inflated to the point that it was unsafe to dispose of when he got it. I ended up hand delivering the whole thing to the local disposal site where they have the proper gear to deal with these.

[jeffbee]

It does help. It raise the opportunity to discuss it, which is helpful because not everyone is aware that this is a problem, and like many other lease clauses it is there to assign blame in case an exceptionally bad event comes to pass.

[trebligdivad]

It's got to be tricky for people to know what cells they have inside their {phone, toothbrush, bike etc}.

[CamperBob2]

like many other lease clauses it is there to assign blame in case an exceptionally bad event comes to pass

That sounds like a job for the insurance company. You do have insurance, right? Did they have any input on this clause?

[jeffbee]

They dictated it.

[CamperBob2]

Interesting, and ominous. If the place burns down and they find the remains of a "TrustFire" battery in the debris, they might try to refuse coverage, leaving you with the task of recovering damages from the tenant. And good luck with that...

[dylan604]

Nah, tenants will sign just to move in, and forget about this clause. Just like any tenant that smokes weed disregards no drug clauses. Tenants are going to do what tenants do. Unless you're doing routine walk throughs looking at every single thing in the place that could use a battery, then you'll never know. It's a useless "regulation", and we have plenty of those in the world already.

[jeffbee]

It's wrong to have an unjustified low opinions of tenants as a class. They are normal, well-meaning, intelligent people like any other.

[quesera]

  s/tenants/humans/g

The large majority of tenants do not read their lease paperwork carefully enough for this clause to make a difference.

A large majority of humans don't read EULAs.

A lease clause is useless for liability, because your landlord's insurance won't be able to shake down the tenant anyway.

Someday soon enough, your insurance might require a clause like that. It will still be ignored by tenants though.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

And the "intelligent" part makes them realize that you get absolutely nowhere if you try to strictly follow all rules (there's a reason why "work to rule" is an effective sabotage strategy), and that the path of least resistance is to sign and ignore it.

[dylan604]

It’s not unjustified. I’m a tenant. I don’t read all of the clauses. I’m a normal well meaning intelligent person. Does not change anything about what I said.