Almost Got To Thank The Fire Dept

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Battenkiller

Minister of Fire
Nov 26, 2009
3,741
Just Outside the Blue Line
So...

Yesterday I started the stove as usual, pushed the coals off to the right side, removed about 4-5 shovels full of ashes, put them into the the enameled bucket I keep by the stove, and put the lid on it. Pulled the coals back over to the left and in front of the inlet air at the back of the stove and put a couple pieces of bone-dry box elder on top of the coals and I was off to the races. Last thing I did was to put the now full bucket of ashes outside to empty in a day or so. I used to have a special spot where I dumped ashes, well away from anything burnable. Last year we started gardening again, so I've been putting them on the garden. Not only am I getting free fertilizer, it is about the safest place to dump ashes on my property.

Well, I went about my day, prepping for the big blizzard we were supposed to get. About 3 PM I noticed out the corner of my eye that snow was starting to blow pretty hard. It wasn't snowing yet, so I just assumed it was the wee bit we had on the ground kicking up in the wind. Then about 3:30 I looked out the window again and saw that the snow wasn't blowing around everywhere, just from one particular spot in the yard. And it wasn't snow after all... it was smoke!

WTF! I called out quick to the wife, asking her if she dumped those ashes. "Yeah, I dumped them over the bank." And directly onto that big brush pile we had built this spring when we reclaimed 20' on our perimeter. :ahhh:


"Well, get your _____ a$$ down here, we have a fire on our hands."

Hose put away for the season, water shut off at the outside nozzle, but wanting to avoid the FD if at all possible. I ran out there with two gallon jugs of spring water to assess the situation. Thank God, the prevailing wind here had shifted for the afternoon, and the wind was coming out of the Northeast. If those 30 MPH winds were coming from the southwest it would have been a pretty nasty fire that would have had to be put out by the FD. Through another stroke of luck, I had finally decided to tackle those big box elder rounds that had taken up two pallets of space until a few weeks ago when I got my electric splitter, or they would have been in a direct line to the blowing flames. As it was, there wasn't a stick on the pallets, but the pallets themselves were in full flame.

Lady BK kept filling 2 1/2 gallon cat litter containers she kept wanting to recycle (now she knows why I save stuff like this) and I kept running them out. An hour later I could see in the light of my headlamp that there was no visible steam anymore, and the whole are looked thoroughly quenched. Maybe 100 gallons or more dumped on the fire. Still, I didn't go to sleep until I made one last check and saw that the snow was covering the spot the same as the rest of the yard. Finally, at about 2 AM I went to sleep. Alone.

First time in 31 years I made Lady BK sleep on the couch.
 
The wife on the couch? Sweet. I din't know that one could do that. In all seriousness though, glad you were able to avert disaster.
 
Battenkiller said:
WTF! I called out quick to the wife, asking her if she dumped those ashes. "Yeah, I dumped them over the bank."
There is no chance of that ever happening to me. She doesn't dump ashes.

I've got a huge brush pile that I never got around to burning last Fall. That is where I usually dump my ashes, but only after the pile has been reduced to ash. As for ashes and the garden, the wife won't put anything in the garden she doesn't pay good money for so mine eventually gets blended with the compost and top-dresses my lawn.

Sounds like you didn't convey to your wife, your plans for the ashes too well unless you planned to burn that brush pile and put the ashes from it on the garden too.
 
Wow. That is scary, especially with the high wind. Glad this all worked out okay in the end. However, I would not ban her to the couch. Of course you might ask for some special favors....
 
It's legal to burn up here.So I would of let it rip. I 'm glad it worked out for you .
 
Mad Tom said:
. . . I 'm glad it worked out for you .

He left a bucket of hot coals sitting out, cussed out his wife, and banished her for tidying up after him AND cleaning up a brushpile that he'd left laying around in the path of the ashes?

Define "worked out" . . .
 
My hats off to you for the fire fighting effort. Humping 100 gallons one by one and staying at it for an hour must have been exhausting. Could you shovel snow onto it too? I would have sent the wife for the hose and turn on the faucet.

That is scary.

Atleast the brush pile it gone and that area will be nice and green come spring.

Glad it wasn't worse.

All of these stories - benefit the rest of us by providing a learning experience. I keep a bucket handy. I dump my ashes when they are good and cold - plus I dump a bucket of water on them and stir them just like smokey the bear taught me as a kid.

"only you can prevent forest fires!"
 
snowleopard said:
He left a bucket of hot coals sitting out, cussed out his wife, and banished her for tidying up after him AND cleaning up a brushpile that he'd left laying around in the path of the ashes?


Well, when you look at it that way, I suppose the incident was entirely my fault. :lol:


Basswidow, the garden hose was packed away in the shed somewhere and we had to act quickly. If the wind shifted it could have been disastrous. The first several gallons got the visible flames out, all the remainder was to make sure the whole area was quenched deeply. It was treacherous going because of the poor twilight visibility and the need to stand on the side of a steep bank filled with rotting wood and a tangle of branches. The main pile never got torched because of the wind direction. Lucky there, especially with those high winds. We had basically no snow on the ground (the snow didn't arrive here until 6 hours later), and I could see this thing getting out of control and racing across the field to the woods behind us, threatening our neighbors house 1/4 mile away.


The interesting thing to watch was how the fire had crept backwards a bit from the original dump point and into the direction the wind was coming from. I have no firefighter training (although now I regret never having joined the volunteer FD as a youth), so I wasn't aware that this could occur. Seems that the same radiant heat that gets the lower wood cranking in a top-down stove startup will also cause a brush fire to burn in both directions.


Maybe Vanessa knew about this because she was a pyro as a kid? :-/


BTW I didn't really banish the good Lady BK to the couch, that was just a bit of literary license. In reality, I chose the Backwoods Savage method and opted for special favors later that night. :)
 
Battenkiller said:
Well, when you look at it that way, I suppose the incident was entirely my fault. :lol:

As long as you're willing to be reasonable about this point, I'm sure she'll overlook your almost burning the house down because of the hose being banished (you might watch that, starting to develop a habit) to the shed to make room for all the kitty litter boxes. She saves your house, really, the whole neighborhood, a few lives, too, more than likely, and *you* call *her* the pyro?

Battenkiller said:
BTW I didn't really banish the good Lady BK to the couch, that was just a bit of literary license. In reality, I chose the Backwoods Savage method and opted for special favors later that night. :)

Word on the street is that *she* was using *you*, said that you're cute when you're mad. We'll never know, and that's probably for the best.
 
snowleopard said:
Mad Tom said:
. . . I 'm glad it worked out for you .

He left a bucket of hot coals sitting out, cussed out his wife, and banished her for tidying up after him AND cleaning up a brushpile that he'd left laying around in the path of the ashes?

Define "worked out" . . .

Worked out= Not burning their house down. Not burning their woods down. Not burning their neighbors house and woods down. Obviously there was some concern to put the fire out. As for the cussing and banishing that's none of my business. I have enough of my own marital problems. :)
 
Battenkiller said:
BTW I didn't really banish the good Lady BK to the couch, that was just a bit of literary license. In reality, I chose the Backwoods Savage method and opted for special favors later that night. :)
Search http://www.urbandictionary.com/ for the term "haul your ashes".

I'd link to it directly but this BB software doesn't like spaces in the URL.

Here you go. http://tinyurl.com/3yflycq
 
Mad Tom said:
+1

However, I believe Lord and Lady BK will go down in legend for having rewritten the dictionary entry on this one.
 
Lucky guy, you. Seems more than a few married guys end up hauling the ashes themselves, what with the wife being "too tired" to help out.
 
Did you get to play fireman again too?
 
Looks like this thread is heading to Off Topic. ;-)

Look on the bright side BK, at least she didn't make you move a mattress into the basement.
 
wendell said:
Looks like this thread is heading to Off Topic. ;-)
Yep, this banishment thing is taking off in a big way. We'll all be couched here pretty soon.

wendell said:
Look on the bright side BK, at least she didn't make you move a mattress into the basement.
ROFLMAO beats ROSYMAO any day . . I take it that you're on the road to recovery if you can laugh about this . . .
 
wendell said:
Look on the bright side BK, at least she didn't make you move a mattress into the basement.

Good God, no! My stove is down there. What if I messed up and got catapulted onto the hot stove top? It could happen...

Glad to see you are recovering enough to joke about it. A couple weeks ago I almost took a header right into mine when I tripped over a loose boot lace. I had to use all my Ninja powers to hover over the blazing hot beast without contacting it. It was cranking away at 800º at the time! :ahhh:

Here's wishing you a short and complete recovery. :)
 
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