There's gonna be a lot of house fires this year!

[michael]

My buddy (who's a plumber) calls me up the other day and says he needs a hand on a bathroom remodel. Christmas is coming and some extra income wouldn't hurt, so I ride along for the fun and games. After the first job we get a call to install a chimney liner at a nearby home. He thinks it's for a water heater and the customer didn't specify. My intuition told me it was a homeowner trying to install an insert and got in over their heads. All the sweeps are busy, so whats the next logical thing you do? Call a plumber right?

Sure enough. We get to the address and there's a chimney liner sticking half out of the chimney (literally half of it was draped across the roof). The wife shows us the basement, the stove, and the supposed hole this "thing" will reside in. Words can't describe what a hunk of crap this stove was. Freshly refinished with a can of Rustoleum and all. The chimney passage was an offset "Z" shape which had a tree trimming pole run through it which was apparently snagged to the liner. No blanket for the liner, no block-off plate and no back plate to cover the fireplace gap. "Just pull the liner down the chimney and slap her on the stove". "Get 'er done".

I told my buddy that this was not something that we wanted to get involved with. Before leaving, I told the wife (the customer) some of the potential hazards of their install (I'm not a stove installer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night type of thing). I then suggested that they call a certain local chimney sweep to help them out, but they had already called him and he declined the job unless they demolished the chimney and rebuilt from scratch. I'm sure he just loved their stove also.

We could have made a lot of money that day because these people were desperate. Yes, they'll probably go ahead with the job and figure out a way to install it themselves, but my conscience lets me sleep better this way. Just think how many more people are out there doing this same thing or worse. There's gonna be a lot of fires this year and not all of them in stoves. I seriously hope I'm wrong about this.

 

[annette]

I'm all for people doing things themselves to save money--installing something, or switching to a woodburning stove. But when a professional says it isn't safe to do something, people need to listen! If the sweep said the stove was ok, they could just install the stove in an upstairs living space and install a metal chimney. If fuel prices are going up enough to merit their level of desperation, then doing it that way could pay for itself in just one or two winters. Would rigid stove chimney from the upstairs actually be more expensive than a flex liner from the basement?

 

[elkimmeg]

Mike great call. There are times one makes money by not being a party to a half a** If you touched that liner and things went bad
guess who gets sued. No amount of money is worth being part of a disaster You did'nt stay at a Holiday inn, you were on Hearthnet
Stupid fires already started in my comunity and I have condemned 5 stoves already Probably save a life or two doing it

 

[webbie]

You did'nt stay at a Holiday inn, you were on Hearthnet

I love those commercials....here is a funny story. I was talking to the operations people at a large hearth industry company recently. I had recently talked to the "new" CEO, and commented to these guys that the CEO didn't seem to know much about the business.

They said back to me "Well, he stays at Holiday Inn Express".

I actually didn't get the joke while on the phone, but it came back to me an hour or two later - they were trying to cut up on their boss in a nice way!