Burned regular paper?

I often get customers that ask about burning paper in the fireplace or woodstove, this would only be harmful if your flue already had enough build up to be unsafe. Keep your fireplace and flue clean then it's no problem. I have heated my house with kindlin and card board on warmer days. I love being able to burn whatever is available.

webby3650 said:

...this would only be harmful if your flue already had enough build up to be unsafe...

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There have been many instances of brand new redneck installs where the first thing they do is burn the wood crate and cardboard the stove shipped in subsequently burning down the house.

If your chimney has a spark screen it may now be partially clogged.

We don't have a shredder. We simply take anything we want destroyed, anything with our name/address/acct. numbers, etc, and toss them into the woodstove. In 36 years, no issues. I don't load the stove up with a billion pieces of this stuff, of course, just toss in a few items as they come up. If I were to have a box of cancelled checks or whatever, I'd toss in a handful now and then. No problem, at least not with our stoves/situation. When I say toss them in, I mean I add them to a burning fire. Get too much of that stuff in there, it is harder to get it all burned, you have to stir it up several times.

LLigetfa said:

webby3650 said:

...this would only be harmful if your flue already had enough build up to be unsafe...

Click to expand...

There have been many instances of brand new redneck installs where the first thing they do is burn the wood crate and cardboard the stove shipped in subsequently burning down the house.

If your chimney has a spark screen it may now be partially clogged.

Click to expand...

I guess I should of said should not be a problem. I don't run into too many redneck installs around here. I also meant throwing paper on an established fire, seems real messy to burn only paper.

OMG, your house is going to explode!

Okay, seriously, I burn newspaper, white paper, cardboard, old bills, envelopes, cardboard food boxes - basically anything made of wood pulp on a regular basis. I stay away from the plastics and heavily coated wax papers and cardboards. I have never had a problem and I sweep my own chimney every year.

I guess it depends how much of this stuff you burn and the condition and design of your chimney. You probably won't have a problem after a 1X event unless your chimney and cap (if you have one) were real dirty to begin with.

just dont burn any clay based shiney glossy ads or magazine paper ,it doesnt burn very well and loads up with ash

So when y'all say you burn newspaper... even the colored stuff? While i don't have to use much newspaper to start fires, I do save some... and I've been sorting out the black and white pages... a major pain. I thought my owner's manual (a Buck Stove) said to only burn black and white newspaper, not colored pages. Anyone? Had something to do with 1) corrosion and 2) heavy metals used in inks? If so... wouldn't those same heavy metals be leaching into our water from landfills?

I burned a bunch of junk mail onetime and it smelled horrible ouside. Like burning trash. I smelled a very similar smell about a year later that I thought could have been produced by buildup from the junkmail in the chimney although the chimney had been cleaned after the initial burn.

albertj03 said:

I burned a bunch of junk mail onetime and it smelled horrible ouside. Like burning trash. I smelled a very similar smell about a year later that I thought could have been produced by buildup from the junkmail in the chimney although the chimney had been cleaned after the initial burn.

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That smell was probably Black Locust :sick: I can't stand the smell of that stuff.

lexybird said:

just dont burn any clay based shiney glossy ads or magazine paper ,it doesnt burn very well and loads up with ash

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My first full time wood heating experience was with "Maurice", a huge upright wood burning furnace that gobbled up an overloaded 6 cu.ft. wheelbarrow full of hard wood three times a day. When that puppy got cranking it was like looking into the gates of Hell.

The previous tenant had left behind a sizable collection of girlie mags that I never tossed out. I caught my oldest boy scouring the pages of one, and I decided it was a little too much sex education for an eight year old. Before I went to bed that night, I tossed on about a dozen huge splits, dumped the box of porn (maybe 15-20 mags) into Big Mo's mouth, and shut the door. Eight hours later, the wood was gone but many of the magazines were almost still intact. Even the pictures on some in the middle of the stack were visible. I had to stir that mess up all day to finally get rid of all the dense ash.

If Mo' couldn't digest them, what chance does the average wood stove have?

I burn regular paper and cardboard all the time in my stove, but in limited quantities, and never the glossy magazine stuff.

Well I think it's pretty cool your wife does that...props to her. When I burn stuff like that it's usually on an good established coal bed then I throw a few small splits on to hold it down.

Agreed - don't burn the glossy's, and never, ever burn your porn.

When I have done that in bulk, I found a tremendous amount of ash.

I don't burn a lot of paper except for newspaper and some occasional junk mail when doing a start up fire from a cold start . . . never any glossy paper and nothing with plastic (i.e. envelopes with the plastic windows) . . . and it's all balled or tied in a bow vs. being thrown on in a stack . . . and I don't load it to the gills and touch 'er off.

I made a joke last week to the wife that if she doesnt stop reading those crappy tabloid magazines that I was going to start throwing them in the fire. The next day, cleaning out the back of the firebox I found a burnt magazine. Smelled like chemicals. Thank god she threw a split on top of it. Based on the clean out, I could imagine that doing a number on the screen.

cycloxer said:

never, ever burn your porn.

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...at least without "reading the articles" first. ;-)

My last stove was a VC cat stove and you have to watch what type and color paper that goes in that stove or risk messing up the cat. Cant tell you if they are all like that or not, but this Quad gets a regular diet of my personal info. Now this is only my second year with this stove but i can tell you that i had a 32 oz coffee can of creosote after a seasons cleaning between the stove and 14 foot of pipe. I'm not going to worry about burning a couple of pieces of processed wood on top of a hot fire.....
Watch those Cat's
rn