A friend of a friend had a liner installed by a local company earlier this season. Apparently she burns a lot of wood and my buddy was telling me she usually has the stove unbearably hot. Well she ended up having a chimney fire and after all was said and done the insurance company found that the liner that was installed was too small - not sure what kind of set-up she has but I know she hasn't been able to use the stove this month. She contacted the installers and they pretty much told her that she wasn't getting her money back ... until they heard the "lawyer" word. She is still waiting for everything to be repaired correctly. Not by them, though...
-Story # 2 - This one is scary!!
My buddy has a Dutchwest installed in the basement of his center chimney cape - new stove as of 2 years ago. He has been burning wood for years and definitely keeps on top of his equipment. He was upstairs the other night and heard what sounded like someone hitting the side of the house with a bat. He went outside and looked around, stove seemed to be fine too - nothing out of the ordinary. A few minutes later the sound of Big Papi hitting one out of the park ... Outside again - nothing, checked the woodstove again and realized a faint rushing sound in the chimney. Shut everything down, Outside again - he said there was absolutely nothing abnormal about the chimney - no flames, excessive smoke... Called fire Dept. , went inside and emptied the stove. He said his cleanout door started glowing orange ... How scary is that?? He lives a little far out in the boonies and when the FD arrived with the lack of anything spewing out of the chimney they actually didn't think it was a chimney fire ... until they saw the cleanout door and heard the homerun derby in the flue. They tried a chem fire ext. in the cleanout and had absolutely no effect.
Out came the pressurized water and the steam finally put it out. Needless to say the chimney is junk now, it actually cracked the blocks outside the liner too.
It turns out that the fire was only at the base of the chimney - his thimble sticks into the flue a couple inches (as does mine) creating an area under the thimble that wasn't getting cleaned with regular sweeping. Makes you step back and think...
-Story # 2 - This one is scary!!
My buddy has a Dutchwest installed in the basement of his center chimney cape - new stove as of 2 years ago. He has been burning wood for years and definitely keeps on top of his equipment. He was upstairs the other night and heard what sounded like someone hitting the side of the house with a bat. He went outside and looked around, stove seemed to be fine too - nothing out of the ordinary. A few minutes later the sound of Big Papi hitting one out of the park ... Outside again - nothing, checked the woodstove again and realized a faint rushing sound in the chimney. Shut everything down, Outside again - he said there was absolutely nothing abnormal about the chimney - no flames, excessive smoke... Called fire Dept. , went inside and emptied the stove. He said his cleanout door started glowing orange ... How scary is that?? He lives a little far out in the boonies and when the FD arrived with the lack of anything spewing out of the chimney they actually didn't think it was a chimney fire ... until they saw the cleanout door and heard the homerun derby in the flue. They tried a chem fire ext. in the cleanout and had absolutely no effect.
Out came the pressurized water and the steam finally put it out. Needless to say the chimney is junk now, it actually cracked the blocks outside the liner too.
It turns out that the fire was only at the base of the chimney - his thimble sticks into the flue a couple inches (as does mine) creating an area under the thimble that wasn't getting cleaned with regular sweeping. Makes you step back and think...
