Turn off the blower during reload

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sixminus1

Member
Hearth Supporter
Jan 11, 2008
87
Coastal NJ
I just made the mistake of keeping the blowers on during a reload. I started smelling smoke after about 15 min, and the CO detector went off. I opened some windows and got ready to pull flaming splits out of the insert to completely shut everything down. Then I noticed a few sparks flying out of the blower outlet. Some inspection revealed a few cinders that managed to get caught up in the blower system. I pulled them out, and put the CO detector right in front of the insert. No more alarms.

My theory is that some hot cinders flew out of the firebox during the reload and got pulled into the blower intake.

Shut off your blowers until the area in front of the insert is clean! This was an unwelcome false-alarm, and it's likely going to keep me awake for the rest of the night.
 
And don't forget to open the draft for a couple minutes before opening the fire door to reload.
 
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