Fire is a good servant but a poor master...

[leftyscott]

Learned this by way of a unattended to burn barrel. I'm out in my woods about 1/2 mile from the house. Wife calls tells me there's a fire come to the house….click Jump in the Polaris and head home to find my wife trying to connect the hose. Large piece of cardboard blew out of the barrel. 10 minutes later there's a fire working it's up the hillside. With teamwork quick action and dumb luck we were able to extinguish without having to call the fire dept. We stopped it just short of a grove of cedar trees. If they would have caught fire, it would have been a very bad deal. (Fire Station 30 minutes away).

 

[fossil]

Screened cap on top of flue at daylight. Where I live, they're required because of the risk of wildfire.

 

[mopar440_6]

I keep a 24" square of 5/8" expanded metal on top of my barrel. At my old house I had a piece of lit cardboard fall out of the barrel and light up the bank beside it. Luckily the bank was fairly small and runs down to a creek so I was able to scrape a couple of trenches on either side of the fire and let it burn itself out. Ever since then I always put the expanded metal on the barrel after I light it off.

 

[ironpony]

been there done that....it is scary.

 

[Jags]

Best use I could think of for the retired Earth stove...

 

[Dune]

I remember the forest fire I lit when I was 5. Scariest part (for me) was the well seasoned (think drill sargent) Lt. Fire chief who told me what for.

 

[jebatty]

In MN by law burn barrels may only be used to burn vegetative debris which includes brush, logs, stumps, grass, leaves, and untreated, clean wood, and to do that a DNR permit is needed (at times of the year and depending on environmental conditions, a blanket permit is issued; individual permit is not needed). Garbage and other waste cannot be burned. Burning paper, cardboard is not permitted; ideally those should be recycled.

This is a law intended to reduce harmful air pollution resulting from burning the chemicals, coatings, and hazardous materials contained in household and industrial waste.