Was sleeping very well as usual when my pager tones out. Get to the station roll out the Sterling pumper and head to the call. Arrive on scene no flame in chimney. Since i was the first to show up with gloves i was volunteered to carry all the burning logs out of the house. Meanwhile others are on the roof with a chain down the chimney busting through the creasote. We get all the fire out of the insert pull out the insert and holy crap. Id bet they was a 5 gallon bucket of creasote behind that thing. The cresote on top of the insert had just started to catch up there were a couple of embers still smoking which is what was causing the smoke to come into the house. The whole top of the insert was about 1/2in thick in that stuff. The older lady tells me she burns dry wood and doesnt understand why so much creasote. Here is what i told her. The masonry chimney has no cap and ends at the insert. Any rain goes right down on the stove defeating the purpose of dry wood or evaporates on the way down still causing buildup as it goes back up. Maybe it wouldnt be so bad if it went past the stove to a cleanout but it didnt. You could see where wet creasote had run down into the fireplace and hardened.
chimney fire -fire dept call-
- Thread starter oilstinks
- Start date
-
Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.
We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.
We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
- Status
firefighterjake
Minister of Fire
If I was a betting man I would also bet that the wood that was "seasoned" wasn't . . . and that she may not be running a very hot stove . . . and hasn't inspected, much less swept, the chimney all winter long (or even longer.)
FlagshipSweep
Member
Was it a "slammer"?
Went to a chimney fire call last spring and the insert was a slammer. There was so much creosote burning in the smoke shelf area that some of the guys demolished the back wall of the chimney to expose the smoke chamber and finish putting out the fire.
The insert wasn't very old, but the homeowner had installed it copying the older insert he replaced. No liner all. So he had a stove with a 6" flue spigot trying to vent into a 13x13 masonry chimney.
Luckily for him everything was reparable. Not always the case.
I replaced a "slammer" insert for some friends this fall. The funny thing was they had been having the stove and chimney swept and inspected every year for almost 20 years and the sweeps never mentioned it wasn't properly vented into the chimney. (They didn't install the stove, it came with the house). I imagine that they were religious about having the system swept saved them from a chimney fire, but still an big risk.
Went to a chimney fire call last spring and the insert was a slammer. There was so much creosote burning in the smoke shelf area that some of the guys demolished the back wall of the chimney to expose the smoke chamber and finish putting out the fire.
The insert wasn't very old, but the homeowner had installed it copying the older insert he replaced. No liner all. So he had a stove with a 6" flue spigot trying to vent into a 13x13 masonry chimney.
Luckily for him everything was reparable. Not always the case.
I replaced a "slammer" insert for some friends this fall. The funny thing was they had been having the stove and chimney swept and inspected every year for almost 20 years and the sweeps never mentioned it wasn't properly vented into the chimney. (They didn't install the stove, it came with the house). I imagine that they were religious about having the system swept saved them from a chimney fire, but still an big risk.
Backwoods Savage
Minister of Fire
- Status
Similar threads
