I was just leaving for work on Friday when the tones went off for a chimney fire at an apartment unit . . . I figured it was nothing until I started hearing reports of the fire not going out, the fire being between a liner and the brick chimney and one officer saying he could not close off a thimble because there was nothing to close it off with . . . so being curious I responded with a camera.
After the fire was finally knocked down with a good charge of water from a hose line the Assistant Chief said I should go in and take a look.
Egads . . . there were numerous thimbles in the place, but most were sealed up . . . except for the one thimble on the third floor which had a short junk of single wall stove pipe (maybe a foot) with nothing but a key damper in it. This was where the officer said he could not get it shut because it would not close all the way and apparently to the Lt. it looked like "Dante's Inferno" as apparently creosote was burning between the liner and the brick chimney.
Things got even better when I went to the basement only to find an unlisted steel woodstove with a 7-8 foot horizontal run to the chimney (I'm still not quite sure how they hooked up the liner), the woodstove was literally within 5-7 inches of a 1/4 sheet of plywood being used as a heat shield of some sort, there was a large hole cut right above the woodstove so heat could rise to the apartment overhead and according to the Captain the large stash of firewood and flammable materials that I saw about 1-2 feet away from the stove were actually only inches away from the stove until he moved it.
Honestly . . . sometimes I think folks want to have a fire.
After the fire was finally knocked down with a good charge of water from a hose line the Assistant Chief said I should go in and take a look.
Egads . . . there were numerous thimbles in the place, but most were sealed up . . . except for the one thimble on the third floor which had a short junk of single wall stove pipe (maybe a foot) with nothing but a key damper in it. This was where the officer said he could not get it shut because it would not close all the way and apparently to the Lt. it looked like "Dante's Inferno" as apparently creosote was burning between the liner and the brick chimney.
Things got even better when I went to the basement only to find an unlisted steel woodstove with a 7-8 foot horizontal run to the chimney (I'm still not quite sure how they hooked up the liner), the woodstove was literally within 5-7 inches of a 1/4 sheet of plywood being used as a heat shield of some sort, there was a large hole cut right above the woodstove so heat could rise to the apartment overhead and according to the Captain the large stash of firewood and flammable materials that I saw about 1-2 feet away from the stove were actually only inches away from the stove until he moved it.
Honestly . . . sometimes I think folks want to have a fire.
