Can an Over fire be stopped?

[BrotherBart]

co2 will extinguish the flame & ascend the flue. the wood without a flame is still offgassing & fill the stove with explosive smoke. water will extinguish & cool the fire thru evaporation. it will take longer to ascend the flue. a wet newspaper in a plastic bag will release the water slowly after the plastic melts.

Sure thing, just go ahead and open her up.

I'm gonna stand over here...........

Hey Bubba. Hold my beer and watch THIS. :ahhh:

 

[firefighterjake]

The best way is just to prevent it in the first place by starting to close down the primary air in stages as the stove top crosses 450 to 500 degrees. Otherwise I haven't ever had one run away from me over 750 degrees with the primary air shut all the way down except my old stove and that was because of a cracked firebox letting air in. Ya can't stop that stuff.

Plus one . . . same situation here . . . in addition the only two times I have even had the stove top temp going higher than 650 was due to my own fault -- getting the fire started with smaller splits and leaving the air control half way open or all the way open while I was off doing something else . . . no worries . . . but good lessons learned . . . would have been better of course if I had learned the lesson the first time.

 

[firefighterjake]

Close down the air intake as much as possible and sit back and relax. Nothing you can do. I've been there many times where the stoves is above the max temp that I feel comfortable with but the inside of the firebox is a raging inferno of hell despite the air control being at 0%.

There's the point where you just sit back and wait for the thing to settle down and just see what happens. I will admit that I've sat there and waited for it to settle before going to bed. It's one thing to lose control, it's another thing to lose control and then ignore the problem. You need to be ready to take the next step.

I agree ... one time I did turn on my fan to cool down the stove . . . but in retrospect all I may have been doing was cooling down the thermometer and not doing a whole lot for the stove . . . it did make me feel good to see the temp drop . . . but as you said I suspect it was really just a matter of closing off the air as much as possible and riding out the event.

 

[firefighterjake]

Hmmm ... CO2 or a wet newspaper. I'm crazy enough to go into a burning building when people are running out, but I'm not crazy enough to try these two things.

Why I would not use the CO2: As mentioned there is definitely a potential for thermal shock when using this on metal. Carbon dioxide extinguishers can and have been used by service men for years to cool down a warm beer in an aluminum can and one of the negatives specifically mentioned when using these extinguishers is that it comes out cold and you should not have any body parts exposed. Why would I want to dump a large amount of this super cold gas at a very hot fire?

In addition to this, CO2 is a gas and the way it works there is a definite chance that opening the firebox door and just letting loose could cause the contents to be sprayed out of the firebox. In my view opening the door is a very bad idea as now you are giving the fire even more oxygen . . . and this event is probably occuring while the fire is already in the stage when the secondary combustion is happening . . . which is why I would also not open the door for the wet newspaper trick to say nothing about the potential for a whole lot of steam to be produced at once which could again cause damage to the stove. My final easonfor not suggesting the CO2 extinguisher: not very many people have them . . . they're rather expensive and just not used that much by folks in the general public.

Folks can do what they want, but as for me and my stove we are going to try avoid getting in the overfire situation in the first place, not dwell on this potentia roblem since it seems as though this typically occurs due more to operator error in my case and if this does occur shut down the air control and just sit back and monitor the situation.

 

[ControlFreak]

Just close down the draft air control and set the fans at max speed. Those two things, combined with a little bit of time will bring the temps down. An overfire condition is not an emergency that you should go crazy about, unless you've been burning smokey fires and have a tendency to build up creosote -- thus the risk of chimney fire. Yes, it's not the best thing to happen, but you don't need to go through heroic efforts that can turn out to be more dangerous than the original condition.

It's too bad modern stoves don't have a setting to completely shut down the draft. That would solve this issue real quick.