Honey wake up, we got a chimney fire!

A cautionary tale (with a happy ending) about woodburning safety.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• chimney
• fire
• fireplace
• woodburning
• stove
• chimneysweep

[UTubeGlennAR]

A BIG sincere thanks for taking the time n effort to "dick around on uTube" and post this important video.......

[TheMudbrooker]

@UTubeGlennAR Your welcome!

[flowerpt]

Nicely narrated video! I made the same mistake with a half-cleaned chimney once but I got lucky and it didn't ignite.

About that 4-5 weeks bit though - nobody around here does that; we have ice and snow on our roofs for a good 4-5 months out of the year, and heat for six. We all clean our chimneys once a year and the chimney sweeps recommend that schedule too. My stove has a smoke reburner and we'll typically run it hot for months on end, so a full cleaning yields maybe a half gallon of soot.

[TheMudbrooker]

@flowerpt Your heating season sounds about the same as ours. The problem I have is that even with a hot fire (no reburner) and decent wood most of the chimney stays cold. Within about a foot and a half of the stovepipe entrance the chimney passes first through an unheated attic and then outside for the last 7 feet. So the smoke cools and condenses fairly quickly, with most of the build-up happening in the last 6-7 feet. By the way, what kind of flue do you have?

[Otokogoroshi]

Eeek! I've never cleaned my chimney before! Granted I live in Phoenix so I only get to use the dang thing once in a blue moon and rarely use real wood (use those fake logs from the store usually)... Time to get the sucker looked at! Ten years of off and on use and never being cleaned is probably a bad thing!

[TheMudbrooker]

@Otokogoroshi Oh my yes, ten years is long overdue!

[OfficerLarryNMSE]

The first thing you should've done, is to get everyone out, "call the fire department", if you can extinguish it yourself safely, try it. "Next, stay off the roof". The best way to extinguish a chimney fire, is to do it from the bottom up. Pour a pan of water directly on the fire you lit, it will vaporize, the steam will travel upwards and snuff out the flames, including unseen extension. In 3 decades as a FF, I attended a lot of fires, that were supposed to be out, when everyone left for work.

[lrd9999]

If you put all the money that went into wood stoves, chimneys, chimney cleaning, chainsaws and extra fire insurance into into better insulation it would probably return the same savings with no fires, lost limbs or smoke stinking up the neighborhood.

[theXcenter]

lol i looked like a monkey fuckin a basketball

[multigunlover]

our fire place just blew up... ugh.

[packleader38]

fucking excellent

[ozzirt]

Burn hardwood, and creosote is never a problem, here in Australia where this is almost always the case, people rarely if ever clean their chimneys and chimney fires are almost unheard of, I have never cleaned a chimney in 45 years and have never had a chimney fire.