To be fair, the US one said "a stubborn fire", and we only see a short section of the whole story there, while the Dutch video shows a start to end timeline. It's likely the US ffs are monitoring a bit to see what happens after initial activity. Maybe the flue is less amenable to the chain approach of the Dutch folks.
If ever I saw a great example as to why you absolutely need to burn dry wood and clean your chimney -AND- Have a bucket of sand handy and a fire extinguisher or chimfex or whatever. The last thing you want is to have PFF's dumping water down your chimney. An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.
I keep a large box of baking soda near fireplace. My firefighting instructor said rip the top off box and shake it in the flu. The updraft will suck the powder up and smother it. Essentially a dry chemical fire extinguisher powder is baking soda.
Not trying to be a smart or dumb azz....trying to understand. If you've got a chimney fire, I'm assuming you probably also have a ripping fire in the stove. How do you shake the baking soda in the flue? I could see maybe trying to quickly open the stove door, throwing it in and closing the door?
I was just thinking the same...having been around stoves that were firing toward the upper end of their operating range, it's hard to even get close enough to toss in a piece of wood, let alone sprinkle some soda in...a stove with an overdrafting chimney fire could be much hotter
Sorry I was referring to a fireplace insert not a stove. I also keep a long pair of welding gloves for just an occasion
you really had to go there huh.. I'll bite my tongue because this wasn't intended to be a pizzing contest.
I was wondering what the picture was for and then I saw it. How does one enable the "really" feature?
I was a volunteer fire fighter for several years and I recommend to woodstove owners this . Have several ziplock baggies of ABC fire extinguisher powder near there stove. As soon as they realize they have a chimney fire open the stove door and toss in a few. I am sure as mentioned baking soda will work but ABC powder is dirt cheap. I carried a couple baggies in my turnout coat so to be ready. We very rarely used water on a chimney fire.
I had the same question...I suspect locally there is a welding supply store that reloads abc extinguishers that would probably sell it...
Most any place that services fire extinguishers will have "old" powder that they have removed from expired extinguishers. Most towns of any size will have at least one shop that does this, because extinguishers in any public building or business are required to be inspected annually and serviced and/or pressure tested every few years (length of time depends on type). A true service on an extinguisher means new powder, seals, and pressurizing. We always got the powder in 5-gallon buckets from the folks that did our annual service to make our "chimney bombs" with. As Walt already mentioned, they're just zip-lock bags, either sandwich or quart size, that we would drop down burning chimneys. I would guess that most shops would sell the used powder to an individual, I don't know. Water down a burning chimney should be a last resort, such as when the chimney is hot enough to ignite structural components and therefore threaten to burn down the building. Unless you're very lucky and very careful/judicious with application, you're pretty much guaranteed to crack the liner. So we only "hosed" a chimney in dire circumstances. Some departments may jump to water quicker than others. Dry powder and mechanical cleaning was always our preferred method, although hot and messy work. And be careful with the powder - it's not good for your lungs and it's corrosive to metal and electronics.
