A poll: How many of you have experienced a chimney fire in your home?

Grand pa would induce a chimney fire about once a week, just to keep things clean and keep the big fire chance down. Fom what I hear lotsa old times did similar. Not right, just the way it was.

Zero, and fully intend to do all I can to keep it that way. Rick

Never experienced one, but may have had a couple that I wasn't around to experience based on the evidence left behind. Puffy creosote.

Had smoke coming in at my last house. I called a sweep, who condemned the chimney. Landlord blamed me for a chimney fire from the wood furnace I was using, but I had just moved in a month before so I doubt it. Got a free SS liner out of it, which made Big Mo' a happier heater. Even if I did cause it, that was over 20 years ago... have to start somewhere.

I thought I was having a chimney fire every day when I ran the stove up to 6-650º for 15 minutes to clean the flue, but I found out that I'm just drying it out and it's falling back down the flue. And I thought I was flirting with disaster.

A few, when I was a kid and we had the wood & coal stoves. Stepdad was in the fire department. He was a Commish. Lotsa jokes for many years.

My own burning? No. Although I still wonder why it didn't incinerate last year when I cleaned the insert and put the boost baffle in wrong

I have had one. No fire department call. Burned itself out. Changed set up afterwards and stove. No more fires in the chimney.

struggle said:

I have had one. No fire department call. Burned itself out. Changed set up afterwards and stove. No more fires in the chimney.

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Interesting thread.

Struggle - What did you change in your set up besides the stove?

Shari

When I bought our current home a few years ago there was an old Franklin Stove installed, badly installed, none of the min. clearances were observed and even chimney(double wall SS) was installed backwards!! I was green and didn't know any better, So my wood was also green. Put about 1 cord threw the stove and one day was cleaning up around the hearth and had a small cardboard box that the firestarters came in, chucked it in the stove and the draft drew the burning cardboard up the chimney,

Lucky enough I have a close friend that supplied me with a fire extinguisher before we moved into our new home, long story short there was white dust all over our living room and for some reason my home had "snow" on it and none of the others in the neighborhood had gotten snow!

That was the last time that I burned that stove inside my home, it is now our backyard marshmellow roaster!

We have since installed a new stove, chimney and have properly seasoned wood, oh yes and 2 new fire extingushers supplied by the same good friend!

Back in 73, I bought a free standing fireplace from wards. I didn't want to pay $.50 a gal any more for oil, (wish those prices were back). Well being new to burning wood, my wood wasn't seasoned enough. About half way through the winter, one night it started get really hot in the liven room. Just then there was a knock on the door, some guy driving by stopped to let me know I had a chimney fire. Thank god, I installed everything right, firebox in the ceiling, triple pipe out through the roof, and had a steal roof. It got really hot, you could see the fire in the stove pipe is was so hot, and it burned the rain cap off. I made a medal cover for the opening of the fire place the next day, but never needed it. Just to cover it up at bed time, to keep the heat from going up the chimney after the died.

I had one a few years back. I did a reload and shut the doors and opened the damper. I was at fault, unseasoned wood and too many cold fires and all it took was a few minutes. The sound of one is nothing short of evil. I don't drive so no car in the driveway and when a neighbor saw thick black smoke she called the FD. I dampered down and luckily it snuffed it out! As it got quiet I heard sirens but at this point had no clue anyone called so when I went out to look at the pipe the woman ran over apologizing because she did not know I was home. I told her she did the right thing and thanked her.
FD came down the road and went right by!! I waved them back and they were on their way back to the station.

Damage done was nothing too bad since I caught it in time but on the attic inspection I noticed I bubbled the paint on my insulated pipe so had a sweep come out to do a full inspection. He said it's okay to burn but he would not pass it again as he wanted me to get all new pipe. Setup was around 30 years old and all original.

Several years ago, I got a call in the middle of the night from my mother. Dad was off on a fishing trip, and the stove/chimney was making a lot of noise.
I had her go outside & look at the chimney. flames were coming out, so I told her to call the fire dept. I was at least a half hour away, and couldn't have done much even if I had been there.
No damage to the stove or flue.
My sister now lives in that house and they still use that stove and chimney as primary heat. Mom & Dad live next door.
Brother-in-law & Dad are now active members of the fire dept, so it would be embarrasing to have it happen again.

About 25 years ago, I was having dinner at some friends' house, when the fire dept. showed up, fighting the foot of new snow on the road. Apparently a neighbor had seen flames coming out of the chimney and called them. We hadn't heard anything, and nothing seemed to be happening at the time, so they left and we continued with dinner. Never did know if there was a real fire or the neighbor's imagination.


Don

We had a fire in our chimney when it was still just a fireplace - 32 years ago. We had just bought the house and had no experience with wood burning. Apparently the previous owner never cleaned it at all, and in mid-January it lit off. I grabbbed a metal snowshovel and threw the burning logs out the back door. Fire dept. came, looked at the construction of the chimney and said to just let it burn itself out. The chimney is clay tile lined, with concrete poured between the tiles and two courses of brick. They said it would never burn through. My insert is installed with a SS liner to the top, block off plate, etc. and when I have checked it out the last two seasons, the liner is very clean. I never want to hear that roar of a chimney fire again!

We had many chimney fires when I was a kid, big roaring ones. Masonry chimney, pre-EPA stove of course, many days Dad and I would cut the oak firewood during the day and feed it to the stove that night, sometimes the creosote would drip out of the pipe thimble and run down the paneling on the wall behind the stove. We never lost the house, but the chimney didn’t like it very much. Eventually the creosote could be seen seeping out of the pores in the bricks and mortar (it was an external chimney). The first few I can remember, Dad would get out the ladder, climb up to the top of the chimney, and dump baking soda down it (at least I think I remember it being baking soda, but could have been salt or baking powder or something else). In later years, he'd barely look up from the newspaper, but if there wasn't any snow-cover, he'd send one of us kids out to watch that the burning chunks and sparks didn't catch the roof on fire. Never once did we call the fire department.

In my own home, and now using the last pre-EPA stove that belonged to my dad, I have never had a chimney fire as such. The old stove still does produce some creosote no matter what, but nothing like burning same-day oak. All of my oak firewood has been seasoning for at least three years before it's burned. Occasionally I get enough creosote buildup in the single-wall pipe inside the house to quietly burn out, but not anything that would cause concern. I am scared-to-death of chimney fires, but I am not afraid of creosote, if that makes any sense. I expect creosote, to some degree, and I respect it.

To this day, when I listen to the police scanner, the local fire departments are paged out to several chimney fires every winter. Dad's old method of burning same-day oak is still quite common around here. As a matter of fact, they all giggle about me having so much wood cut and being so far ahead in my supply. Guess who they come to when the snow is so deep that they can't cut today's wood for their stove? Ha!

Never in my own home, but I did start one in a customers home once.

I had one at my last house. Small stove and I would burn it way to low too get more hours out of it. (That's why I am so glad I found this forum. Thank you all.). The sound was unreal....like a freight train running through the chimney...the smoke and smell were terrible. It was a masonary chimney and luckily, burned itself out. I had the chimney cleaned and chain whippped after that. Very very scary event. Bigger stove, higher temps and more seasoned wood now.

We had one in our house when I was a kid (mid 80's). I didn't even know what was going on as my Dad was running up and down the stairs. He called the Fire Dept. and asked them to come down with no sirens so as to not cause a commotion in the neighborhood...Well they came with multiple trucks, sirens blaring - the neighbors all came out. Talk of the neighborhood that day.

Rob

I had numerous small ones prior to getting the chimney lined and insulated. Some right in the the thimble.
Only one since the liner went in. I fell asleep in my chair one night and my wife decided to round up all the cardboard in the house and get rid of it. You guessed it...she burned it. Three full loads! When I woke up a couple hours later and went to check the stove, I found the firebox literally packed with corrugated ash. After cleaning out the ash I went ahead and stoked the stove back up without knowing the fire had occurred. In fact I didn't know what happened until the next morning when I went outside and found the snow all around my house speckled with little bits of black ash. I mean it was everywhere! I looked up at the (now) shiney rain cap and I knew what happened. The heat really burned that sucker clean. As BB stated..."Whoops!".
Haven't had one since, although I'm keeping the flu temps up this year as some of my wood isn't quite ready yet.

Yup back with our old brick chimney and smoke dragons we'd burn super hot twice a day to burn off any creosote...sometimes in the morning it would touch off a load roar so we'd manipulate the inline flue damper to lock down the fire. Then open it to burn it out some more without it getting out of control...hey back in the day that's what we did.

It was SOP for my wood burning mentors and that was good enough for us.

I am pretty sure we had a small one, my 15yr old decided to throw a pizza box in the stove when it was already 2nd stage burning and it sounded like a train dropping in the living room for about 6-10 seconds. Needless to say he won't be doing that again scared the sheet out of him

My brother and i were good friends with the neighbor kid when we were growing up, and we spent a lot of time at each others house over the course of 4-5 years. They heated exclusively with wood, using this ginormous stove that really didn't put out many BTUs given the amount of material it consumed.

Chimney fires were a frequent occurrence, but then again, he would throw everything that burns into the stove...including a regular diet of old railroad ties.

Had a minor chimney fire 5 or so years ago due to my laziness in not getting my chimney cleaned for a few years.
I was burning in an old smoke dragon insert at the time.

It was very scary after closing all the draft down... I was standing outside watching my chimney cap glowing orange with phone in hand getting ready to call 911.
Having cedar sided house+ fire dept. that I knew would not arrive for at least 30 minutes gave me some tense moments.
Ended up not having to call 911.

Never again

Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire said:

We had one in our house when I was a kid (mid 80's). I didn't even know what was going on as my Dad was running up and down the stairs. He called the Fire Dept. and asked them to come down with no sirens so as to not cause a commotion in the neighborhood...Well they came with multiple trucks, sirens blaring - the neighbors all came out. Talk of the neighborhood that day.

Rob

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They just love running those sirens, and letting every body in the neighbor hood, know you screwed up.