99 Ways to Burn Your House Down

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Anybody else ever had all the fire alarms in their house go off at once and had ALL the children sleep right through them, while you are running around dying from the sound, trying to figure out what the heck is going on?

That's not so surprising . . . there have been some studies on how some children will not wake up to the sound of many smoke detectors. It appears however that smoke detectors with an alternating pitch will have better results . . . and talking smoke detectors (some you can tape your own warning) have even better results at waking sleeping children.
 
well one thing i do in the winter is have the right amount of garden hose to reach my stove. its in the heated basement nothing worse than to have a fire and your hose is frozen or having not enough hose to reach it !! never needed it but id rather cover may butt.
I'm not so sure I want to use freezing cold water near a red hot stove...I think I would prefer a fire extinguisher.:oops:
 
I'm not so sure I want to use freezing cold water near a red hot stove...I think I would prefer a fire extinguisher.:oops:

If the stove is that HOT it is probably damaged anyway but I still wouldn't hit it with water. To get that hot it probably went through all the fuel in it and is already cooling down. The material in it, cast iron & ceramic window, might react violently from a sudden burst of water.

I would want to hose down the sofa (or the drapes, or the coffee table, etc) that had proper CTC but caught fire anyway from the intense heat of the run-away stove.

KaptJaq
 
I'm a new burner, and am still getting used to the process of burning in a stove. I went to bed last night thinking after getting a fire started in the insert and having it stabilize at about 600. I was lying there with my eyes wide open thinking "did I close the air supply down enough?"; "am I sure that I closed the door?"; "has the coupling come off my liner at the stove outlet?"; "is everything moved back far enough away (did I even check that tonight)?". Ultimately, I went back downstairs and checked everything, and all was fine.

However, it got me to thinking: I don't know what I don't know. I mean, I know the basics like 'make sure your flue is clear and clean before burning' and 'keep combustibles away from the stove' and 'burn dry wood'. But I wouldn't have thought about my child stuffing a plush toy up into the convection air cavity on the top of my stove - until I was told to look for that. I also would have thought that ashes sitting for two days would not have any live coals in them that could ignite the trash can - until I was told about that.

So, I'd like to hear the 'cautionary tales' that could result from having a live fire in your house. The result would be to have a list of things to do (and not do) to prevent the worst from happening, and to allow those of us who are new to be able to sleep easy knowing that we've covered all the bases.

If you have an ash pan, make sure you only empty it when the stove is cold or at least after an overngiht burn when there are not too many hot coals in the stove. When I first got my stove last year I made the twin mistakes of emptying the ash pan once when the stove was relatively hot and right after I had just raked the ash into the pan to fill it up, adding even more hot coals into the pan. Although I was wearing my 20" stove gloves, the pan was so hot that it went through the gloves after about 10 seconds before I was able to get to the backyard. Dumb mistake, but one I will never repeat again.
 
Okay, here's another one. Don't paint with volatile-type paints or solvents with your stove burning, cooking stove on, or furnace active. Just a few days ago, some millions of damage was done in a very expensive part of Seattle when (according to the news), a contractor had been using lacquer in a new house when the furnace ignited the fumes and exploded. It totaled the house and severely damaged some adjacent houses. No one was killed.
 
Okay, here's another one. Don't paint with volatile-type paints or solvents with your stove burning, cooking stove on, or furnace active. Just a few days ago, some millions of damage was done in a very expensive part of Seattle when (according to the news), a contractor had been using lacquer in a new house when the furnace ignited the fumes and exploded. It totaled the house and severely damaged some adjacent houses. No one was killed.
wOw
I would never think that would be a danger:eek:
 
the other hand I can guarantee you that every year I will hear of at least one house fire in the area that will be caused by someone who thought the fire was out and they dumped their ash into a plastic bucket, cardboard box, paper bag, etc. and then placed the container on their wooden deck, porch, garage, etc. . . . only to find a hot coal inside. Treat all ash as if it has a coal inside
I believe this is what happened last Christmas in Hartford CT. That was sad.
 
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wOw
I would never think that would be a danger:eek:
Well,it does take just the right mixture of fumes and air to explode like that ("stoichiometry"). Hopefully, it would be rare for that ratio to be just right like that, but it can and does happen. In this kind of case in a closed structure, the fumes could just build and build until the critical mixture is reached, then all it takes is an ignition source. It's the same problem as natural gas leaks or anything else like that. Too much fumes or too little and it won't ignite explosively. It's a Goldilocks thing. It has to be just right.
 
-Procrastinate on things like getting that heat shield up, repairing a bad door seal, or chimney sweeping.
-Let clueless, unaware, houseguests operate your stove without taking the time to teach them how to do it right and why.
-Lose track of your fire extinguisher, e.g., move it around a lot or put it in a cupboard and be unable to find it in the stressful, urgent, moment of truth (or, just as bad, render others unable to find it).
-Too much small wood with too much surface area, combined with inadequate control of air supply.
-Be a cheapskate: rely on a thirty year old fire extinguisher; let your unemployed carpenter neighbor, who has never installed a stove before, do the job cheap.
 
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+1 on making sure your fire extinguisher is good to go. It's not a good feeling when you pull the pin and squeeze the handle, only to find out nothing's going to come out.

Been there. It sucks.
 
Scariest personal experience for me had everything to do with combustibles (firewood) sitting too close to the side of a steel stove that was rippin' into its overnight burn fuel load.

How close was it? Between wood beams and lockers inside these big old fireplaces, lintels, and door jambs... I have lots of wood close to my stoves. Depending on how you interpret the less-than crystal clear diagrams and instructions of old stove manuals poorly translated from Swedish to English, I'm either okay or doomed.

At first, I followed somebody's advise and opened the door for little while after lighting, but I won't do that anymore at all.

That's the standard procedure outlined in my stove manual, as well as others I've perused. Of course, that statement is always followed by the text, "never leave the stove in this state." I always crack my front load doors (never the ash door) during light-up, typically for the first 3 - 5 minutes of burning, but I never walk away from the stove with the doors cracked.

Just like smoke detectors.. we have more than 1..

We have two separate systems, one hardwired (with battery backup), and then a second system installed by our central-monitoring company. We have five smoke detectors with carbon monixide on the old hardwired system, and we have more than 10 smoke and fire (heat rise) detectors on the centrally-monitored system. My father spent much of his life as a firefighter, and the rest of it as a fire inspector, providing advice on fire investigations. I grew up seeing the result of too many fires.

Anybody else ever had all the fire alarms in their house go off at once and had ALL the children sleep right through them, while you are running around dying from the sound, trying to figure out what the heck is going on?

Yes. Very scary.

And to add to the topic... owning a thermostatically-controlled fan. In the aforementioned fire investigations, the worst fires I've ever seen were those in houses with thermostatically controlled fans. In one or two cases, an attic-mounted whole-house fan was controlled by a thermostat on the second floor. Fire starts, thermostat clicks the fan on, and turns your entire house into a very efficient blast furnace.
 
Uh, don't run pipe through plywood out the window. Sadly that is what happened to someone who was in my musician group of friends. If I had known he was setting up a stove I could have seen to it he used my installer, even if I had to pay for it. He lost everything and was not insured.
 
Uh, don't run pipe through plywood out the window. Sadly that is what happened to someone who was in my musician group of friends. If I had known he was setting up a stove I could have seen to it he used my installer, even if I had to pay for it. He lost everything and was not insured.
Yikes. Dry wood can ignite at only 451 F (or at least books can, according to Ray Bradbury...). Stove pipes can get so much hotter than that. Stove tops and sides, too, for that matter. Ask fossil.
 
You may never walk away from a stove, but I have. Sometimes it's a phone call, or someone needs the door unlocked, or I go out to grab something.

That's why I like keeping to the minimum clearances, to protect myself from my own stupidity.

"Dear Homer: I owe you one emergency donut. -Homer-"
 
Can't add anything to the wealth of great advice here but fwiw I will share this. My stove mfr also recommends leaving the door cracked a bit when lighting it up from cold. Which I do - usually @ 60 seconds and it's going strong and I close the door. Once (with a nice mix of cedar, spruce, and a couple small-ish very dry maple pieces, apparently stacked in some magical way that was aligned with the moon and stars, destined to go thermonuclear) I lit it up, let it roll, closed the door (but left the air open full) and went to get my coffee. About 5 minutes later (kinda guessing as I didn't time it, but enough time to gab a mug, put the kettle on for my better half, mix my brew, etc.) i came back and the flue temp was passing 950 and approaching 1000. I lit the stove a hundred times and never saw it go like that before. Not a disaster or anything, I just closed the air and all was fine, but I was stunned by how hot and how fast that kindling took off that day. I don't leave the stove now until the fire is settled into it's groove (first get coffee, then light stove, and enjoy both in front of the fire).
 
That's not so surprising . . . there have been some studies on how some children will not wake up to the sound of many smoke detectors. It appears however that smoke detectors with an alternating pitch will have better results . . . and talking smoke detectors (some you can tape your own warning) have even better results at waking sleeping children.

A bomb can go off in my house and nobody else but me would hear it and to think I only have 70% hearing in both ears! LOL...not sure if this was sad but i think i would like to know what to do in case of chimney fire? what if one of the kids throws something at the pipe on top of the stove and breaks it while a fire is going? just all the what if's. i have a fire exstinguisher downstairs and have checked all the fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure they work
 
Can't add anything to the wealth of great advice here but fwiw I will share this. My stove mfr also recommends leaving the door cracked a bit when lighting it up from cold. Which I do - usually @ 60 seconds and it's going strong and I close the door. Once (with a nice mix of cedar, spruce, and a couple small-ish very dry maple pieces, apparently stacked in some magical way that was aligned with the moon and stars, destined to go thermonuclear) I lit it up, let it roll, closed the door (but left the air open full) and went to get my coffee. About 5 minutes later (kinda guessing as I didn't time it, but enough time to gab a mug, put the kettle on for my better half, mix my brew, etc.) i came back and the flue temp was passing 950 and approaching 1000. I lit the stove a hundred times and never saw it go like that before. Not a disaster or anything, I just closed the air and all was fine, but I was stunned by how hot and how fast that kindling took off that day. I don't leave the stove now until the fire is settled into it's groove (first get coffee, then light stove, and enjoy both in front of the fire).
Great story. You just can't walk away thinking you'll be back in time (or at least I can't). I guess sometimes when the outside air is warm or for some other reason you're getting a smoke buildup, you may need to establish a draft for a couple minutes, but don't walk away. Even when I have the stove turned up all the way for 15 or 20 minutes to get it hot before turning it down (on a fresh start), I set a timer that I have right next to the stove. Religiously. I'm still looking for a hi temp alarm and it's looking like I'll have to build one or spend around $60 for one, which I will do if necessary.
 
A bomb can go off in my house and nobody else but me would hear it and to think I only have 70% hearing in both ears! LOL...not sure if this was sad but i think i would like to know what to do in case of chimney fire? what if one of the kids throws something at the pipe on top of the stove and breaks it while a fire is going? just all the what if's. i have a fire exstinguisher downstairs and have checked all the fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure they work
Get one upstairs, too. The big 8 pound ones.
 
speaking of kids - another thought that just occurred - a friend once had an incident with his son - I believe he was standing by a stove, warming his hands (turned facing away so he had his hands behind him) - not sure if he got distracted by something, just not paying attention, lost his balance or whatever, but his hands touched the stove and he got burned pretty bad as you can imagine. I would say in addition to extinguishers, alarms, etc, a good first aid kit and some basic knowledge of what to do in the event of a burn would be great things to have on hand. I have to admit I need to do some work in that regard myself....
 
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Yikes! Is that evolution in action? My ash goes into a metal bucket that sits on the insulated brick floor the stove sits on... and gets dumped out back usually days later.

But the scariest thing I ever saw was the stove install when I moved into my cabin. The stovepipe (for a wood stove!) was B-Vent pipe !!!right through the roof, zero clearance (touching) the 80 year old roof boards. The inner wall of the pipe was gone (melted away) and the wood it was touching was charred. How it never burned the cabin down I can't imagine... the previous owner said he rarely used the stove, but the guy before him used it "nightly".

Then there was the plywood box covered with fake brick surrounding and hiding the stovepipe... resting directly on the stove. The inside of said box was lined with aluminum foil... as if that would do anything...

You really should take them out and put them in a covered metal pail which sits on a non-combustible surface asap.

Sounds so very familiar. Ours was an old Fisher with correct 8" pipe. However....the pipe was connected with a piece of aluminum flashing held in place with thin gauge wire. The feet were cemented into the hearth pad, and the corners were set into the stone surround, WELL below clearance.
 
You really should take them out and put them in a covered metal pail which sits on a non-combustible surface asap.

Sounds so very familiar. Ours was an old Fisher with correct 8" pipe. However....the pipe was connected with a piece of aluminum flashing held in place with thin gauge wire. The feet were cemented into the hearth pad, and the corners were set into the stone surround, WELL below clearance.
I missed the part about leaving the bucket inside. I'd worry about CO buildup from any material left smouldering., as well as accidentally knocking it over. +1 on taking it outside asap.
 
My stove is pretty much used on weekends (at camp). One long weekend a couple years ago, we had the usual great fire going all weekend (cold as hell outside). Since we were leaving early Monday evening, we let the stove wind down most of the day, then shut it right down before we left. Anyway, the following weekend I returned (Friday afternoon), cleaned out some of the ashes before re-lighting the stove, put them in a steel bucket and took the bucket outside, as usual. I had a plastic garbage bag sitting out beside the driveway, on the snow, where I was throwing some small scraps from the renovation work I was doing inside - junk I didn't want to burn in the outside fire. The ashes "appeared" to be stone cold so, naturally, I figured I'd dump the bucket in the bag - I could take the whole thing home with me at the end of the weekend and out to the dump. Duh. Playing around outside, about an hour later I noticed a funky smell and a bit of smoke - the plastic had melted off one side of the bag, and bits of the stuff inside were smoldering.

4 days between shut down and start up and there was still some life somewhere in the ashes. I was kinda shocked, but I guess it was best to be "surprised" out in a cold snowy driveway, as opposed to middle of my living room.

Sharing my stupid human trick - one that didn't end in tragedy - fwiw...
 
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Don't burn a bunch of cardboard and papers all at once, ESPECIALLY if you haven't swept the flue and might have creosote build up.
 
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