Who’s had a chimney fire with a modern EPA stove?

You know, I have been cuirious about this myself.

No fires above the box here

Data shows that chimney fires are still increasing, but that might be due to more people burning wood due to rising costs of alternative fuels.

What a great question! I've been fortunate so far... now I guess I have to go find a piece of wood to knock on... so to speak.

in the years ive worked at ESW i have never , not once taken a call from a customer who had a chimney fire in his epa stove. not saying that it isnt possible or cannot happen , but i personally in the thousands of calls ive fielded have never discussed one with an owner of an EPA englander stove, or any other esw stove for that matter.

if these fires are on the rise as posted, the upturn in woodburning , is part , also folks getting into woodburning the wrong way is a likely reason. its amazing what folks will do and think they can get away with it. ive seen pictures of inserts sitting on a wood floor!, pipes out windows, run along rafters or basement floor joists and out , below peak terminations, even had a guy who worked for the highway dept , who got a section of metal corrugated pipe like you put under your driveway and stood it up , torched a hole in it and plumbed a woodstove through his wall into the pipe! uninsulated , freestanding about 2 ft away from the wall outside. now he didnt get a chimney fire , but he may as well had a fan at the top of that pipe blowing down for all the good it did him , said it was downdrafting so hard it kept blowing out his matches when he went to light the paper in the firebox. finally he got a plumbers torch and proceeded to smoke his house up quite heavily. then tried to blame the stove! ive got a picture of it somewhere, its quite funny, but its paper, and im not sure where it is , if i ever find it i'll post it in the "darwin" section

also one mightnot know if he has a chimney fire in a liner and if so it wouldn't last long because there would be less buildup
unless they always burn green and never get it cleaned so anything is possible

Along the lines of what people will do, I had an unbelievable customer service call the other day, where basically the guy asked me everything you aren't allowed to do in a wood stove.


He asked:

Can he burn all lumber?

If he cuts a tree down can he burn it right away?

Can he burn treated lumber?

Railroad ties?

Charcoal?

Painted wood?



I had to keep from laughing, because it seemed he was reading what he shouldn't do and going line by line asking me if he could. Almost felt like a test.....

Corie said:

Along the lines of what people will do, I had an unbelievable customer service call the other day, where basically the guy asked me everything you aren't allowed to do in a wood stove.


He asked:

Can he burn all lumber?

If he cuts a tree down can he burn it right away?

Can he burn treated lumber?

Railroad ties?

Charcoal?

Painted wood?



I had to keep from laughing, because it seemed he was reading what he shouldn't do and going line by line asking me if he could. Almost felt like a test.....

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disguised my voice pretty well didnt i ... you passed by the way lmao!

just kidding , but , welcome to my world, i get em too, and just when you think youve heard em all... the phone rings again

Does it take a direct flame to start the creosote on fire? Just how hot would it have to be in the chimney to start it on fire without direct contact with the flame?

Seems the stories I read about chimney fires are either ones fired up for the first time in a long time and usually in open fire places, or they are fires in attics where there are prefab fireplaces, real builder box messes. I can't think of one in the last few years that I would say came from a properly installed stove. I think the proper operation goes with the proper install. In my area lots of folk use wood as their primary source of heat and take the safe operation very seriously. Hard to get the firetrucks out 20 miles when it only takes about 20 minutes to turn the chimney rocket into a house of rubble.

I too was actually very curious. Having had a chimney fire 2 years ago, it made me a bit aprehensive about bringing fire indoors again. But that was a prefab zero clearance fireplace; not the same animal. I still find myself staring at the stove waiting for a freight train ... ) I'll be watching this thread closely, for my own peace of mind!

Metal said:

Data shows that chimney fires are still increasing, but that might be due to more people burning wood due to rising costs of alternative fuels.

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Where is this data on chimney fires reported? For those of us interested in reading more.

A new non stressed A vent chimney installed with proper clearance's is designed to handle a certain temp 2000F + - for a certain time period. 10 MIN ?
Is it not? Would that not represent a chimney fire. A thorough inspection then is required for bulges/blisters and seam separation before re-use. I know that the insulation is not visible to see but it would have to discolor the stainless. wouldnt it?
I will have to admit with my old stove after playing with my min draft stop I grew some pretty ugly stuff in my chimney in a couple of days witch caused her to rumble one morn an a reload. That tinkle tinkle + smell got me worried. I shut her down and pulled the ash drawer. Stuck some duct tape over the rest of the open area @ the damper stop. Everything calmed down pretty quick. The tinkle tinkle finally disappeared. Yes the chimney cleaned itself. No flames out the top
just smoke for a short while. Accessed my attic during this period. Could not hold my hands on the pipe but nothing discolored .blue ect...
911/ fire dept is not an option for me. I did remove sections of my A vent to fully inspect. All was fine. I did however put my min damper stop back to factory settings. From trying to increase my burn times I almost chanced on burning my house down. Bought a new cat stove three weeks later. Had another 2nd party inspect my A vent to confirm all was OK.
Help us out moderators. Whats your angle on this. How can a person measure its intensity after the fact?
Is there such thing as a little chimney fire? RE; Less creosote=less fuel= shorter fire. ????
N of 60

stoveguy2esw said:

in the years ive worked at ESW i have never , not once taken a call from a customer who had a chimney fire in his epa stove. not saying that it isnt possible or cannot happen , but i personally in the thousands of calls ive fielded have never discussed one with an owner of an EPA englander stove, or any other esw stove for that matter.

if these fires are on the rise as posted, the upturn in woodburning , is part , also folks getting into woodburning the wrong way is a likely reason. its amazing what folks will do and think they can get away with it. ive seen pictures of inserts sitting on a wood floor!, pipes out windows, run along rafters or basement floor joists and out , below peak terminations, even had a guy who worked for the highway dept , who got a section of metal corrugated pipe like you put under your driveway and stood it up , torched a hole in it and plumbed a woodstove through his wall into the pipe! uninsulated , freestanding about 2 ft away from the wall outside. now he didnt get a chimney fire , but he may as well had a fan at the top of that pipe blowing down for all the good it did him , said it was downdrafting so hard it kept blowing out his matches when he went to light the paper in the firebox. finally he got a plumbers torch and proceeded to smoke his house up quite heavily. then tried to blame the stove! ive got a picture of it somewhere, its quite funny, but its paper, and im not sure where it is , if i ever find it i'll post it in the "darwin" section

Click to expand...

not funny because he could have got himself at least hurt. but reading about it after the fact, this guy deserves a honorary harvard degree. that is the funniest setup i've ever heard about.

BTB said:

Metal said:

Data shows that chimney fires are still increasing, but that might be due to more people burning wood due to rising costs of alternative fuels.

Click to expand...

Where is this data on chimney fires reported? For those of us interested in reading more.

Click to expand...

Here is a site with data from 1999-2004 (well after EPA stoves came about). The good news is that deaths don't seem to be rising.

http://www.csia.org/PressRoom/ChimneyFiresCarbonMonoxideStats/tabid/63/Default.aspx

The last chimney fire I investigated was a oil fired stove connected to a Class A chimney. Best we could figure the stove was setup too rich and caused deposits. During the fire the chimney grew in length and opened a gap in the tee feeding the base. Gases escaped and lit the room on fire.

Very odd to see a fire like that with a selkirk style insulated chimney.

We clean up the aftermaths of three or four chimney fires a year, about half of them where EPA approved stoves are installed. The common thread is unseasoned fuelwood, or an unprotected wood pile. I have learned on the Forum that East Coast Winters are usually dry, with an occasional rain storm, so when a seasoned wood pile gets rained on, it will quickly dry back out again. Not so here in the rainforest, where WInters are mild and wet, and an unprotected wood pile will soak up rainwater right to the core of each piece. No matter how well-designed the stove, water turns to steam and messes with both the primary and secondary burn, causing heavy creosote formation in the flue.

slowzuki said:

The last chimney fire I investigated was a oil fired stove connected to a Class A chimney. Best we could figure the stove was setup too rich and caused deposits. During the fire the chimney grew in length and opened a gap in the tee feeding the base. Gases escaped and lit the room on fire.

Very odd to see a fire like that with a selkirk style insulated chimney.

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Selkirk has had issues with hot spots due to their insulation being solid pack, instead of blanket type, so it can settle over time leaving uninsulated gaps.

This brings up a good point - liability to the manufacturer's that DON'T specify operational temperatures in their owner's manuals.

Vermont Castings covers their butt by saying: "Inspect the chimney and chimney connector at least twice monthly, and clean if necessary. When you first begin using the stove, check daily for creosote"

But seriously, how many of you clean twice a month? And check daily as a newbie? I wouldn't have known what was excessive or what was normal. It took me months to learn how the stove was supposed to operate - and by far the BIGGEST problem was the lack of operational temperature guidance in my manual. I was dampering down to early and creating creosote. That was my first year burning a woodstove, I didn't really know what to expect. I read the owner's manual carefully, cover to cover, like 4 times. I followed every specification for clearances, r-values, etc - the total install was painstaking, but done right. All that is well and good, but I still didn't know how high I was supposed to get the temperatures, or when I was supposed to damper down exactly, or what the temps were supposed to do AFTER dampering down.

After a few weeks of poor operation, I'm sure a bunch of creosote had formed. Soon after, I discovered that I was supposed to be burning much hotter than I had been, and that the stove worked much better when it was burned that way. I'm sure you can see the potential for problems when someone goes from not burning right to burning hot (and correctly). Needless to say, I did end up having a very minor chimney fire - I don't remember a loud noise though, and it literally only lasted for a few seconds, there wasn't even time to run outside and see what was coming out the stack - the only reason I know there was a fire is because smoke came out of several joints in the flue and the flue thermometer showed a spike in temperature (I forget how high it got, but I know it was NOT above 1200), and there was black debris outside all around the chimney (on the roof, on the deck, etc) like everything that was in there blew out all at once.

I could find no damage, I took the flue/chimney apart and saw no damage, but the last piece of the stainless steel chimney was discolored on the outside. I have heard that some people try to burn extremely hot every now and then to intentionally clean out their chimney this way, although that doesn't sound like a great idea to me...

I have never had a problem since then, and when I clean the chimney only a couple handfuls of "black stuff" fall out.

I've been an insurance claims adjuster for about 10 years (Shshshsh..... don't tell anyone. We aren't all bad). Got out of the construction biz and into insurance after back surgey. I've had the opportunity to see the results of several chimney fires over the years. Most of what I've seen happens in fire places with clay flue tiles. However I have seen a few with steel chimneys. All the ones I've seen were with older fire places and a few with old inserts. I've also seen a couple where the fire originated as stove pipe goes through the outside wall. Those were older installations. Mostly due to the pipe deteriorating where it goes through the wall.

Now that I'm interested in installing a stove in my own house, I will pay even closer attention to what I'm looking at.

I am curious about the temps involved here...I have heard that 'train' sound, and also the 'tinkle-tinkle' sound in my pipe/chimney when getting a fire going...more than once. On occasion the temp quickly jumped into an unsafe zone, but nothing glowed, etc and with shutting everything down the train stopped and the tinkle subsided within moments. Please tell me this is not a chimney fire...

I think it would be EXTREMELY few chimney fires which could rise to the temp of the HT testing, that being a short burst at 2100. A proper installation should not have enough air to support a massive chimney fire.

I have a feeling that if we really studied each situation closely, we would see very few chimney fires of the type which would damage HT pipe or stainless liner...with EPA stoves that are properly installed.

You hit the nail on the head. If a system is properly installed (per manufacturer's installation instructions) it should be almost impossible to have a chimney fire. UL tests for the worst case scenario, which rarely if ever happens.

"Metal"

I almost swatted that bug!!