1 degree outside...Chimney fire is no fun...

Gary W. Graley

Gary W. Graley

“Imagination is more important than knowledge"
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Mar 2, 1999
Messages
27,466
Way to start the weekend folks, my wife got up early to go and get our grandkids to help our daughter by watching them during her work hours, she tossed in a bundle of tissues and some loose paper into our wood stove, the flames jumped up into the stove pipe and started what sounded like a jet engine. She ran outside trying to use the chimney cleaner pipes and brush but couldn't get it far into the chimney, the fiberglass rods melted...it was hot. She banged on the window to get me up and I hobbled out to the chimney as best I could in the frozen snow and it was not good.

Minutes later our local fire dept arrived, helped get the fire out of the chimney, took the wood in the wood stove out of the house. Can't start a fire in there until it gets cleaned and possibly a new chimney is a more likely thing to happen, probably a safer thing to do also but in this time of year, I don't know if you can set blocks for a chimney?

The GOOD thing is, we are both safe, a little smokey and got to meet new friends early in the morning :) and the house is still in tact. We are in the process of trying to sell our home, I'm sure this will be a big selling point, or maybe my wife was trying to start a fire sale?

Called our insurance company to see if they will be able to help, Statefarm, haven't heard back but I'm guessing they are in a warm house sleeping right about now ;)

And just checked, we now have 3 degrees outside, climbing, slowly but surely !

G2
 
I have a wood furnace and I have to regularly clean the chimney every couple of month using the brush to keep safe here. Chimney fires are no fun and only had one bad fire here shortly after moving in over 30 years ago. Wife said you left the outside light on. I looked outside and said that is not a light but we have a fire. fire was shooting out of the top of the stack like an upside down space shuttle.

I put the fire out by shoveling snow directly into the furnace and emptied out the fire extinguisher too. Since the house had a huge mortgage I had the neighbor pour a 5 gallon pail of water down the top of the chimney. Better to damage the chimney than to lose the house.

It all turned out okay, had the stack checked out and continued using it for another 25 years. Its an insulated manufactured chimney, and replaced it with another at reasonable cost. Those manufactured chimneys don't require any special base and are fastened to house itself.

My advice to anybody with wood heat is to clean the chimney whenever one has any doubt and to have a regular schedual. One chimney fire was enough to convince me. Otherwise wood heat is very safe, and wood heat is all I know, I have never had any real heating bills other than the back up oil furnace that uses less than 100 dollars of oil a year.

Glad you are safe and the chimney did its job containing the flame. Chances are your stack will be okay since you found the fire early.
 
Yikes! :eek: Sorry to hear about your ordeal Gary, but I am glad you and the misses are safe. I hope all goes well with Stare Farm. Take care!
 
Thanks guys, about 7 trucks had shown up, two proper fire trucks, an emergency truck and other volunteer guy and gal's personal trucks, quite a lot of people on hand.
The lady firewoman commented on our old wagon wheel that was converted into a ceiling light, I smiled and said 'yeah, we like that too'

Nothing from State Farm yet but we'll get in touch with someone that can check chimney's out and possibly have a new one made, the blocks around the 8x12 liners some of them show the joints fractured or missing and the top area is rather nasty looking right now.

The wood stove has a long pipe to the pipe that goes through the wall, that thimble in the wall has some cracks in it as well, but I know they have been there since we've been there, over 30 years now. The thimble through the wall is encased in concrete so I wasn't too worried on that spreading out into the attic or walls.

UGH, as we know, we're fortunate that it didn't happen while we were away or asleep, it all could have been much worse for sure.

Heading out to get some new Carhartt PJ's ;)

G2
 
Glad there were no injuries or serious damage. Can't they just sleeve it with a triple walled duct. It's required to be that way on new installs here.
 
Could have been much worse indeed. Potential unexpected bills are the worst. I hope State Farm takes care of you and yours Gary. Good luck.
 
I don't know on the triple wall stuff, we are trying to sell the house, don't want to mess it up more, but we'll see what they say when it gets inspected.
Being an existing chimney and about a 3 foot thimble through the wall to the chimney from the wood stove's 12 feet of pipe, not sure how that would all get connected up.

G2
 
Glad you and yours are all safe and sound. That'll wake you up though.

Once I asked my pop what he was doing on Pearl Harbor Day…
"I set the house on fire."

We had coal heat, he was working in his basement wood shop and threw a pile of sawdust, that he swept up, into the furnace.
Started a chimney fire just like yours…

Again, glad you all are OK, that's what matters :)
 
Wow that's a bad thing right there, and thanks it is good no one was hurt and no lasting damage to the house. We have a spot to store wood inside the house, can quite a bit of wood stored there, it has a big door that opens out to the back, so you don't have to haul wood through the house, very good idea and came in handy today when they had to empty the stove, we just tossed it out that side door, no burn marks on our rug in the kitchen ;)
G2
 
What type of wood do you burn Gary ?

I'm just glad your OK , and are still around to tell the story .

Ken
 
Thanks Ken, it's a mixture, we get it from a local timber company, it's cut and split and they even de-bark it so it burns real well, just got away from the wife this morning, hopefully when we get it checked out the chimney will be able to still be used, otherwise that'll be a big endeavor for sure!
G2
 
Gary,
The chimney was probably ready to catch fire at any time, it was a good thing someone
was right there when it did. I am glad that no one was hurt and Your home was not badly
damaged. I hope Your foot is still continuing to heal.
Good Luck to You though out the year.
 
Thanks Tim and just viewed a few youtube videos on HOW to run a wood stove properly, really never gave it much thought, stuff burns, you clean, stuff burns and clean some more, but if you burn properly seasoned wood and run the stove hot, you shouldn't see smoke out the chimney. We always equated smoke with things are working, but now see that smoke and chimney's shouldn't be seen together that often, I'll have to change our whole process, which means locating some firewood that is a bit more seasoned, saving up firewood for next year now.

But first, the chimney needs inspected and some parts maybe the whole, needs repaired/replaced :( and maybe a new wood stove would be in order too. Glad I'm independently wealthy ;)
G2
 
Gary W. Graley said:
maybe a new wood stove would be in order too
Click to expand...

I learned about clean burning wood stoves from the friend of a friend who lived in a cabin on Vashon Island, the biggest island in Puget Sound. He bought land there when it was cheap. When I visited it had improved roads and modern auto ferries (22 minutes to downtown Seattle) but it was still a quiet rural place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/travel/vashon-island-near-seattle-a-rural-throwback.html?_r=1&

He bought a 100 year-old log cabin built by a Finnish carpenter and moved it to his property. It looked like a Viking house, and of course that is what it was, but it didn't have a grass roof. Maybe it does today! I saw it in the 1970s.

He had a stream full of stones and he'd planned to put his home on a stone foundation, but that wasn't up to code. He had to use cinder blocks instead, and he covered them with plastic as a vapor barrier so they wouldn't rot his 100 year-old cabin. He didn't think much of the building code, but he liked the clean-burning wood stoves. Washington state regulated air quality and wood burning long before the Federal Clean Air Act.

He would go out in his woods and cut buckthorn, haul it back and chip it, and burn it in his stove. He said a load would burn 24 or 36 hours, depending on how he set the thermostat, and everything burned down to fine ash. So feeding it wasn't a problem unless he got lucky and spent the night in Seattle. He really liked that stove.
 
Sounds idyllic to be sure :) bet it was a nice quiet place to visit there!
G2
 
His cabin looked like this (no sidewalk)

authentic_viking_house_by_pikkatze-d310s0j.jpg


with a roof like this

5621829.jpg


He cut a rafter dragon head inside with his chain saw. Gotta like those Viking cabins, but I don't know about mowing the roof . . .
 
Hah be my luck I'd fall off while mowing! but very artistic and serene looking, I like it, thanks for sharing!
G2
 
We have been using this for decades.

"Anti-Creo-Soot (ACS) is a non-toxic and environmentally safe liquid manganese catalyst that attacks and destroys dangerous creosote and soot."

We run hot and don't have a lot of ash or build up in the flue. The temperature is monitored by oven thermometers for stove and pipe.

Even had years where the chimney sweep showed up and tell us, the flue didn't need to be cleaned.

Glad to hear that family and home are safe Gary.
 
Thanks, that sounds a good product will have to invest in that. State Farm is suppose to come by tomorrow, they claimed they never got my message, also have an inspector/chimney cleaner company suppose to come by, called them today and they were going to call back with a time, never called back...ugh !
G2
 
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