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Chimney Fires
Saw another post somewhere about a chimney fire recently. It was recommended that one should have a pro clean out the chimney once a year, or buy your brushes and rods and do it yourself. There's a cheaper way to do this. We used to climb up on the roof with a long logging chain. We'd drag the chain around the inside of the chimney, with an up & down motion, against the walls. That would knock off the creosote. It works, try it and see how much of that stuff you have to clean up! We never had a chimney fire, even after many years of living in that house. Tried to do it for father-in-law's house, but he wouldn't let me. He had a real exciting chimney fire! Could see it for miles, and could hear it a long ways too!
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This is the why to go. Chimney fires are scary in that if there is a weak spot in the liner, you can set the whole house on fire and lose everything.buy your brushes and rods and do it yourself
I would say it would be worth it to have an expert out so he could go over the flue and liner in the chimney (if you don't know someone with this knowledge) so you can learn to do it yourself.
I would stick with the brushes (as you recommended) and use the chain as a backup, if/or when something goes wrong. -
Interesting. We always had a woodstove or fireplace but we never had someone come clean anything. I'm sure it would have been a good idea. When we had chimney fires, we basically watched them and let them burn themselves out. If they seemed to be getting going just a bit too good, you went on the roof with your baking soda and poured it down the chimney. I know, that is not real helpful and that way of thinking probably burned down many a house. I think having your own brushes is a great idea. After all if you can clean it out with a chain, you surely can figure out how to with the brushes.Comment
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we burnt wood for over 80 yrs counting the time my parents lived here and never cleaned the chimney, there is no secrete but you can't burn green wood or let the fire smoulder, you have to open the bottom draft and let the fire burn so the smoke goes out and not build up on the chimney walls. If you do have a fire, shut down all the air going into the stove, air will feed the fire, then have a couple bags of loose cow salt handy, it's cheap, about 10 dollars for 50 pounds, drop some of the salt down the chimney to knock out the fire, don't put water down it.Comment
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We've been burning wood in the same place for over 20 years with no problems. My habit has also been to rattle a chain down the flue to clean it out (though I use one that’s a bit lighter than a logging chain). I thought I invented that idea. After the first few years it was obvious we didn't have a creosote problem and I would occasionally forget to do it for a given year. No problems. As well, we pretty much always burn pine as that's most all we have in these parts. The key is to keep a hot fire and as an offshoot of that, as crossbow said, limit your use of green wood. Keeping a hot fire can be problematic if your stove is too large for your space. You’ll always need to shut it down to cool off thereby burning too cool and inefficient and that’s the recipe for creosote if done too much. Last year I moved the old stove out to the shop to make room for a ‘prettier’ new stove in the house. The new stove didn’t draw well at all and I could hardly get a good hot fire going. This led to one minor torch off in the flue. Before this burn season I modified the stove and added better air intake and it’s like we got a whole new stove again. It starts fires easily now and burns hot with vigor. That’s the key.
gkComment
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old tire chains used to be the thing to use, they were light and there were lots of pieces to hit the walls.Originally posted by gkmiami View PostComment
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