stockdoct said:
I'm not so afraid of the stove malfunctioning or burning up ..... I'm more concerned of "human error" (that'd be ME) when I load it up. Did a spark fly out onto the carpet and I didn't notice it? Did I seal the stove door shut tightly? Did I inadvertently vacuum up a hot ember with the mini-quick-vac I use to keep the hearth clean?
Although my wife is certain we're gonna die of carbon monoxide poisening or else I'll burn down our house, I'm getting more and more comfortable over the past couple months "loading and leaving". But I'll still wait a half hour or so just to make sure the carpet isn't smoking (I'll get a tiled "hearth pad" soon) or the vacuum isn't igniting, and I'll make sure the ash bucket is outside, and the fire door is tightly sealed, and the air supply is cut down a bit ....
How old is your carpet? When I researched hearth rugs, I discovered that most of the decent-looking stuff that's sold as hearth rugs is exactly the same composition of materials as the stuff that isn't sold as hearth rugs. You can get super-duper extra-fire-resistant hearth rugs, but most of them I wouldn't have in my home, and they really aren't necessary unless you're throwing your burning stuff around just for fun. Turns out something like 20 years ago, a law went into effect in the U.S. requiring all rugs and carpets be essentially fireproof, so that a spark will extinguish in some number of seconds, leaving you with no more than a melted spot. If you dropped an entire flaming log on one, you'd get some sort of a fire, but not from a spark too small to notice.
My late mother was a demon cigarette smoker, and when I went to clean out her study after she passed, I discovered to my horror multiple good-sized melted places from dropped cigarettes in the carpet around her desk. Gave me the willies, but the lesson here is that that's all that happened-- spots on the carpet basically melted, but the hardwood floor underneath was unmarked and my mother didn't burn the house down.
Cut it out with the vacuum, though, please. That's a risk that makes absolutely no sense. Sweep the stuff up with an ordinary dustpan and brush and dump it immediately into your ashcan or the stove itself. You don't have to eat off of that hearth, just keep it decent, and the vacuum just isn't worth the risk, whether you're at home to watch it burn or not.
As for the door-- after my misadventure with the door handle popping open a couple times when the tip of the latch broke off, I'm totally paranoid about double checking that. I reccommend paranoia about doors. But realistically, unless your stove is on a badly slanted floor, the door isn't going to swing wide open and logs aren't going to jump out of the firebox onto the sofa. A not quite shut door is just going to burn up your wood faster than you want. That's all that happened when my door unlatched itself, I came downstairs in the morning to an unusually chilly first floor.
In other words, be careful, but then relax. Ditch the vacuum for sure. That's the only truly dangerous thing here that I can see.
