Well it finally caught up to us at the cabin. I’ve been saying for awhile that we need to stop burning wood in December that was cut in October. So the President says get rid of this cardboard box I like anyone else threw it in the fireplace. Now nobody said nothing till it was roaring in the fireplace. It died down I went back to running the meat grinder. Then we heard the roar. Now pap says ya shouldn’t burn cardboard in the fireplace but there’s been thousands of boxes thru that fireplace today she just happened to light off.
Sounds like everyone involved is still alive, which is the important part. Lesson(s) learned? At the risk of sounding like a pompous something-or-other, there is plenty of literature on here outlining what not to burn indoors, drying time for wood etc. I’ve never had a chimney fire and don’t plan on it either, but just in case I keep a Chimfex stick in the same room as my stove because you never know.
A chimney fire will typically burn itself out. Half the time, we respond on chimney fires - and they are out by the time we get there. They can be devastating, but not always. But yeah, always burn dry wood. No sense in taking a risk with wet wood.
Oh Lord! Get on the 3 year plan NOW! God forbid it was a devastating fire that burned down your cabin, worse, family or pets and you could not escape. We had a record cold year winter 2013/2014, not above freezing for a couple months. Ran through 8 cords dry wood and ordered more supposedly seasoned. Nope, it was wet, I had a flash fire after only a couple weeks of that stuff, it was a struggle to keep lit and did not put out heat. Don't risk it again, clean the fireplace/stove and pipe or chimney, use chain attachments if you need to. Please do not risk it again.
Felllas there’s wood out back the cabin that ain’t been touched for 4 years under a nice dry woodshed. I say every year but no one listens. We threw a ladder up and I was manning the hand pump we were ready. It’s a gambrel style roof so almost none of the chimney is thru the structure. My cousins carried the fire out of the fireplace. Shut the dampener and she went out, after bit
well if no one wants to sweep it and wants to burn whatever, buy them a gallon of ACS, have them spray it if they remember every time they get a fire roaring in it. Fire probably burned out all the creosote so yinz are good for a few years now
Trying to argue with the old heads is about useless. “ cause I burned wood when you were just a glint in your daddy’s eye”. Now for the good us younger generation stood out ground and the chimneys will be getting cleaned. I intend to bet a bit more thorny to the 50s-60s members that say standing dead is good enough for in the stove
You may have to take it upon yourself to bring a couple handfuls of that in and have it available. If they wont clean a chimney, they are probably going to take the path of least resistance and go ahead and burn it anyway. Just out of curiosity, do they try and tell you that its too dry? I've heard that one before.
I have been told to burn any wood I cut within 2 years or it will be junk since it will be too dry to burn. Impossible to get on the 3 year plan with that mentality.
I've been told it wont hold a heat if its that dry. My thought is "I don't want my wood holding onto its heat, I want it releasing it into my room for me to enjoy!".
Nothing to take lightly here. Consider yourself warned and extremely lucky Chimney fires are in chimneys that are almost always attached to the house.....in the case of a fireplace, most definitely. Make sure your burning practices change immediately! What I understand is why would you use the wood that is 4 years old anyway????
Retired out on permanent disability, but I remember those flue fires, too, climbing up on a snow or ice covered roof. I remember the masonry ones where the homeowner panicked, climbed up on the roof with a garden hose and sprayed water down the flue, trashing it. We carried dry chem powder in Ziploc sandwich bags and would drop one down the flue, worked really well.
I experienced one flu fire when I was about 22 years old or so. It was an old house but the flue was new. And my stove was only a couple of years old. It was one of those Warm Morning stoves that looked like a gas stove. This was back in about 1980. I was burning probably mostly green wood or at least wood that was not properly seasoned for sure. It sounded like a freight train, and the single wall stove pipe was cherry red. There were certain things I didn't like about my stove setup and will not have one set up like that now. First of all the stove pipe came out the back of the stove, requiring me to elbow up, then I also had to elbow again to level out, to hit the brick flue in the wall, and of course from there we have another turn up to go vertical again. In my opinion this is one of the worst flue set ups. Any creosote has all of these elbows and horizontal pipes to build up in and then one hot fire and Bang! You get a flue fire when the creosote lights up. Now days, the absolute most I will put up with one one elbow out the back of the stove, if I have to, but I really don't even want that and I made sure my house stove has no elbows and exits out the top of the stove and goes straight up, except I do have two 15 degree fitting in the flue because my second floor runners and the rafters are not lined up, so I have to do a very slight offset to line up between the rafters. The other thing is those old stoves that could be choked down all of the way were bad to cause creosote build up, if people choked them down on a warm day, and let the coals just lay there and smolder along with a little green wood. My present set up, has been in place for probably 25 years. I have only cleaned the stove pipe twice and there was not anything in it either time. That's because I have a stainless flue, double wall pipe, and I am mostly straight out above the stove, and I burn hot!!! most of the time with mostly seasoned wood. However, many years I burned standing dead red oak, that had been cut, split and stacked for starting out, only a couple of months, but I usually had some wood that was carried over from the last year to mix in with it. I did not ever burn green wood, really. The other thing is, my stove had a baffle in it, and it's built where you cannot choke it completely down. My dad used to always build just a small fire in one of those older stoves you could choke down and that's the way he ran it, burning the same standing dead red oak wood, usually, and his old stove required the elbow out the back, but at least was straight up from there, but the stack was short, and single wall stove pipe to the ceiling. I had to replace that single wall pipe every year, almost. And his flue would creosote up plum to the storm cap on top of the roof. He burned the same wood I did, but his stove set up and burning habits were totally different.
Hearing you talk about your set up has me rethinking mine. I'm getting a new stove in the next two weeks and I'm thinking this might be a good opportunity to change it. Currently, I have a box stove with a 45 out the top through two sections of pipe going to a 90 into a small straight section into a thimble for the masonry chimney. The reason for this originally was that the thimble is in an awkward location and I wanted the stove to the right of the thimble about 4 feet or so. I have never had problems with draft other than to say that it has been too much at times. I live near wind farms just to give you a picture. I wonder what the minimum straight out of a thimble I can have before I elbow down. It would be nice to get the stove underneath the thimble, but it would also be nice to minimize the straight out of the thimble to minimize a collection point. I haven't reviewed the laws recently so I could be full of beans with this idea, but I wonder if there is a way to come out of the thimble with the elbow directly and have the pipe angled down to the stove wherever I had it placed. The wall that the thimble is in is a brick wall with a concrete skim, and it has a concrete floor, so combustibility is minimum.
I like to open up and dry chem extinguisher right into the fireplace or stove. The draft will pull the agent right up the chimney and usually put it out. Where you run into trouble, is when the fire gets outside of the pipe or masonry. Usually through failed or loose pipe - or cracked masonry. Then you have a structure fire on your hands.
