chimney fire!! whoops!!

[Dave M]

My neighbor had a chimney fire last winter at about 11:00 pm...













Now there is a new house next door.

 

[sawinredneck]

So other than the fact you have a fire on top of your house, what's wrong with a chimney fire and how long do they last? I have a clay flue surrounded by brick; No cracks I can see... I burn only soft woods and cleaned the pipe around 3 months ago. Letting the fire burn down to clean the flue again means a cold house. The girlfriend is pretty worried about it though while I'm out of town. I guess I'll try and have a look at it again to check it out, but I wonder what the heck happens IF you have a chimney fire? How do you know you have one, if you're inside the house?

I've never had one, dad had one several years ago, ad I have sen what was left of houses after one.
Pine can create more creasote than a lot of the harder woods. I only burn Hedge, LOTS of creasote, so I clean regularly.
The train or a hard "WOOSHING" (sorry, lame) sound are good clues.
How long they last depends on how much flamable material they have to work with!! Creasote comes out like tar, and sticks to shingles, which when hot enough burn. Shaker shingles are really fun in the dry months! So if you don't get it caught and under control, the house burns down.
Even if you do catch it, you may have cracked the flue, steel or clay, and not known it. So next time you have a good fire going you could have a flame thrower aimed in the attic or on the side of the house just waiting to torch the place. You wouldn't have a clue until it's too late.

I know, a bunch of doom and gloom, but no harder than it is to clean, it's worth the effort!! Surely you have a couple of 40deg. days coming up?

 

[coog]

Curios, Neck, does well-seasoned Hedge create a lot of creosote ? My first year burning the stuff. A lot of the locals seem to think it burns just as well green as it does dry, so I wonder if that's why it gets the bad rap.
I found a bunch in one of my corrals.I am going to cut it after a few hard freezes.I sure like burning it.

 

[sawinredneck]

Curios, Neck, does well-seasoned Hedge create a lot of creosote ? My first year burning the stuff. A lot of the locals seem to think it burns just as well green as it does dry, so I wonder if that's why it gets the bad rap.
I found a bunch in one of my corrals.I am going to cut it after a few hard freezes.I sure like burning it.

If you let it burn hot, it's not much of a problem, try and choke it down it smolders. It's about the same as burning railroad ties. Not sure why, but it's nasty stuff! Figure out how much heat you get out of you're stove and load it accordingly.

Burning green is asking for a problem with any wood, other than cottonweed IMO!

 

[mga]

Of wadded up black and white newspaper every morning.. You will not have flue fires... Get the flue hot daily.

discarded phone books work well also.

but...back to chimney fires......why wouldn't shutting the damper put the fire out? fire needs oxygen to burn, and if the source of oxygen is cut off, would not the chimney fire die out?

 

[AOD]

Never had one personally, we had a few when I was a kid though, one bad one that I was too little to remember and one milder one in 1989. My current chimney is very short (13') and all but the 4 feet of pipe above the stove is Supervent insulated stainless pipe, just a straight shot up. About once a week I burn at about 700 for maybe 10 min, and get some black smoke come out, then nothing, and still clean once every 4-6 weeks.

 

[kd460]

I have a fire place insert and every year I run a brush up and down my chiminey. I did the same this year. I notice while I was cleaning I had a nice glossy black glaze in my flue. I didn't think much about it I just thought that mint it was clean. I decide to take out my insert and just burn the fireplace It wasn't long and I heard a train in my flue. I grabbed a pitcher of water to put out the fire and it put out the flue as well. Instasteam I guess. After checking everthing out real well I found out the black glaze started melting and was pileing up on my damper. That's what caught on fire. I decided after that to do a few small controlled flue fire burns to clean out my chiminey. All the melted globbs turned into a black substance the size of golf balls and baseballs. The balls where falling into my fire, blowing out of my chiminey, and lining my flue. There were two kinds of black balls shiny heavy ones. These were pure chrisote and burned very well, and sooty light ones. These had all the crisote burnt out of the them and would not burn at all. After I was satisfied I had no crisote left just porkrines I run a brush down my flue. This time when I was done I had no black glaze just blackened red clay. I desided that the insert doesn't let the flue get hot enough to burn up the crisote it was just glazing over my flue. Glaze is bad. From now on I'll pull out my insert and burn out my flue every year. If I due it every year I don't think I'll have enough crisote build up to catch fire. This year it had about 3-4 years of glaze build up. I bomb waiting to go off. The chiminey brush does'nt do anything to remove the glaze.

:censored: Crisote!!!

Not trying to slam you, just your story proved that a full length stainless steel chimney liner for your insert is required.

It is not the insert that is causing your problem. It is the fact that you don't have a liner in the chimney.

The smoke and gasses from your insert get cooled and the draw is not "quick enough" with your larger diameter masonry chimney. You may think you have a good draw, but what is happening is the smoke cools on it way up the chimney (from the insert), it is slow to go up the chimney because the amount of air you insert moves for combustion is less than the amount of air your regular fireplace uses.

The slower, cooler smoke causes the build up of creosote in your masonry chimney. If you had a 6 inch (probably 6 inch) stainless steel insulated liner, the smoke will not cool as rapidly and the velocity of the flu gasses will be greater, so drastically less creosote build up.

So, make your your insert safer and more efficient by installing a chimney liner.

Others reading this that are wondering if you need a liner or not (want to save a few bucks or don't want to deal with the extra steps involved), here is a perfect example of why you need one.

No slams intended to Musclenut, but his situation is a perfect example of why a liner is needed. KD

 

[JAL]

Us OWB owners have less problems than you guys do.

http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=81507

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Pine can create more creasote than a lot of the harder woods.

OWT.


Old Wives Tale. Pine is fine, it doesn't produce any more creosote than other woods.

 

[chowdozer]

and a good 18 gauge stainless liner makes a chimney fire a non-issue, watch the roof though. I start a chimney fire everytime it rains hard. I've had my liner red hot at the bottom and could see the creosote through the liner. Stainless is good, it maintains structural integrity well past steel. Next time I'll build it out of inconel.

If you install a liner, just be sure to give it room to expand vertically. It's been awhile, but if I recall the calculations indicated my 16' liner was going to expand almost a couple inches at 800 F.

edit: oh, and use rivet and not sheet metal screws when you put it together.

 

[sawinredneck]

OWT.


Old Wives Tale. Pine is fine, it doesn't produce any more creosote than other woods.

Good to know, thanks Mark!

 

[DonB]

but...back to chimney fires......why wouldn't shutting the damper put the fire out? fire needs oxygen to burn, and if the source of oxygen is cut off, would not the chimney fire die out?

Yes, it does. When I had a momentary chimney fire with my first wood stove about 25 years ago, I simply closed the doors and pulled the damper. It was over in seconds.

 

[chowdozer]

I cleaned out our chimney this fall at the start of the wood heating season and got one cup of creosote from the whole of last years burning. I couldn't start a chimney fire if I wanted to.

It sounds like you've got a nich chunk of stainless!

I installed a 22ft. 20ga 7inch diameter stainless liner in a house I lived in for 15 years. I sealed it off at the damper in the fireplace and filled the 12 inch clay flue liner with vermiculite. It worked quite well and could expand length wise through the plate that covered the top clay liner.

yeah, stainless is the only way to go. Out in the garage I damaged so many pieces of black stovepipe it got a little scary. My summer project I never got to was to insulate the pipe in the chimney. I have some kind of blanket I bought online, I don't recall what it's made of. The only thing I remember was it would take the heat and it was long enough. I'm going to fill the rest of the chimney with vermiculite like you did.

One of the stranger things I have done was made my own chimney cap. It's a stainless Rambler hubcap upside down. Looks a little like a shallow funnel. It has a piece of 1/2" stainless tube welded in the center and points off to the side, (it keeps the water from building up in the hubcap and any creosote drips back down inside the pipe). The whole thing sits on three stainless legs with a collar that fits inside the pipe. I made a quick release for it so I can take it off without any tools in about 15 seconds and it can't come loose accidentally.

I built the cap because I was tired of creosote and rainwater dripping all over the outside of the chimney and staining it. It does work for that. The benefit I didn't know until I started using it is, it never puffs in the house. Absolutely never. In a 60mph wind, it increases the draft and the fire burns a bit hotter.


Someday I'll take a picture of it.

 

[TallElf]

I haven't had a chimney fire but I do have a question. I have a pipe that goes straight through the ceiling into an attic and then out to the roof. Meets all codes for height and gets excellent draw.

THe other day as I was stoking the stove, I heard some "tinking" as if there were flakes falling down. It happens sometimes, but not always. Also if I am just starting a fire (Not roaring) it does that as well. Any suggestions?

 

[AOD]

I haven't had a chimney fire but I do have a question. I have a pipe that goes straight through the ceiling into an attic and then out to the roof. Meets all codes for height and gets excellent draw.

THe other day as I was stoking the stove, I heard some "tinking" as if there were flakes falling down. It happens sometimes, but not always. Also if I am just starting a fire (Not roaring) it does that as well. Any suggestions?

Sounds like the pipe expanding as it got warm, Mine does that when it is changing temperature quickly. At first it worried me but now I am used to it.

 

[Musclenut]

I haven't had a chimney fire but I do have a question. I have a pipe that goes straight through the ceiling into an attic and then out to the roof. Meets all codes for height and gets excellent draw.

THe other day as I was stoking the stove, I heard some "tinking" as if there were flakes falling down. It happens sometimes, but not always. Also if I am just starting a fire (Not roaring) it does that as well. Any suggestions?

That sounds like metal expansion tinking noises.

 

[Musclenut]

It sounds like several people doesn't approve of my setup. I have recently thought about installing a liner but don't know much about them. It sounds like I may need to. I never had a problem until I started useing a insert. My ins. company does'nt require a liner. I could be wrong but I don't beleive they are common or required around here I'm in a lot of new homes being built and have never seen a liner. I noticed last week Lowes was selling a liner. Does anyone know about these liners?
After reading some of the posts I believe the reason I had so much creosote is because I burned a lot of green sugar maple last year. I don't like burning green wood but I was hard up for wood and it was free and allready cut.

How do you seal the liner at the bottom of the chimney?

 

[chowdozer]

I haven't had a chimney fire but I do have a question. I have a pipe that goes straight through the ceiling into an attic and then out to the roof. Meets all codes for height and gets excellent draw.

THe other day as I was stoking the stove, I heard some "tinking" as if there were flakes falling down. It happens sometimes, but not always. Also if I am just starting a fire (Not roaring) it does that as well. Any suggestions?

creosote falling down the pipe.
the creosote expands at a different rate than the pipe, breaks loose and falls off.
I haven't ever heard a stovepipe make noise but I have heard stoves make noise

 

[kd460]

It sounds like several people doesn't approve of my setup. I have recently thought about installing a liner but don't know much about them. It sounds like I may need to. I never had a problem until I started useing a insert. My ins. company does'nt require a liner. I could be wrong but I don't beleive they are common or required around here I'm in a lot of new homes being built and have never seen a liner. I noticed last week Lowes was selling a liner. Does anyone know about these liners?
After reading some of the posts I believe the reason I had so much creosote is because I burned a lot of green sugar maple last year. I don't like burning green wood but I was hard up for wood and it was free and allready cut.

How do you seal the liner at the bottom of the chimney?

http://chimneylinerdepot.com/lander/articles/need-chimney-liner.asp

http://chimneylinerdepot.com/lander/articles/stainless-steel-chimney-liner.asp

http://www.chimneylinerdepot.com/lander/articles/chimney-liner-instructions.asp

I have no association with any of these companies.

Musclenut, what kind of insert do you have? KD

 

[mga]

Us OWB owners have less problems than you guys do.

http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=81507

true.

until the towns begin passing ordinances that restrict/ban/regulate your burning or use of them.