Woken by the alarm. House filled with smoke. Stove shut down for season.

[DavidV]

Early this morning at about 530 I was awakened by the smoke alarm. Daughter had loaded the stove when she woke up but it was belching smoke as soon as she opened the door----not sure why she didn't just shut it and wake me. Anyway. I had to open eveyr window and door to clear the smoke. Looks like my chimney needs cleaning bad. My guess is it got a foothold about 4 weeks back when one of the kids pulled from a stack that had been open to the rain all season and a lot of hissing wood made it's way into the stove. Gonna be putting the new furnace to the test now. I'll try to schedule a cleaning since I don't have a 40 footer to do it myself. Coulda been bad. glad the smoke detector works well.

 

[MrGriz]

Glad the smoke detector did its job for you!

 

[BrotherBart]

Early this morning at about 530 I was awakened by the smoke alarm. Daughter had loaded the stove when she woke up but it was belching smoke as soon as she opened the door----not sure why she didn't just shut it and wake me. Anyway. I had to open eveyr window and door to clear the smoke. Looks like my chimney needs cleaning bad. My guess is it got a foothold about 4 weeks back when one of the kids pulled from a stack that had been open to the rain all season and a lot of hissing wood made it's way into the stove. Gonna be putting the new furnace to the test now. I'll try to schedule a cleaning since I don't have a 40 footer to do it myself. Coulda been bad. glad the smoke detector works well.

Are you sure it isn't the cats that are plugged David?

 

[jtp10181]

Wet wood will definitely do it. All the energy from the fire goes into boiling the moisture out of the wood and the flue gasses end up being a lot cooler than normal. Which then causes a lot of creosote to stick to the walls of the chimney.

 

[webbie]

Could be a lot of things other than the whole chimney being dirty. Flue could have been shut down too low overnight and chimney may have slowed, stopped or even reversed. Yes, check cat to make certain it is not plugged - also check pipe and area right above the stove.

In my experience it is extremely rare that an entire chimney is blocked - it is usually something less than that.

 

[BrotherBart]

Could be a lot of things other than the whole chimney being dirty. Flue could have been shut down too low overnight and chimney may have slowed, stopped or even reversed. Yes, check cat to make certain it is not plugged - also check pipe and area right above the stove.

In my experience it is extremely rare that an entire chimney is blocked - it is usually something less than that.

My father-in-law managed to completely plug my 21 foot chimney in one day. He said that wet wood lasted a long time in the stove. I suspect that the fly ash that was completely clogging the entire length of the chimney actually was from him stuffing newspaper into the stove all day trying to get that crap to burn.

I choked back a scream, gave them money to go to town for a nice dinner, changed clothes and headed for the roof with the brush.

What a mess.

 

[jtp10181]

Could be a lot of things other than the whole chimney being dirty. Flue could have been shut down too low overnight and chimney may have slowed, stopped or even reversed. Yes, check cat to make certain it is not plugged - also check pipe and area right above the stove.

In my experience it is extremely rare that an entire chimney is blocked - it is usually something less than that.

Around here people enjoy burning all sorts of crap in their stoves, totally plugging the cap with creosote. Then they call us and say the fireplace is defective because liquid creosote is running down their $10,000 stone job. So far this season 100% of my "my wood fireplace doesn't work right" calls were because of wet or rotten wood. Well... there was one guy who was using an entire newspaper to get it going, making a giant smoke bomb. He was amazed when I started a fire with about 5% of the crumpled pieces he had strewn about on the floor.

 

[wahoowad]

I find it unlikely that a chimney can get clogged in one day or from burning one wet split.

 

[Eric Johnson]

All you need is a creosote bridge at the top of the chimney or a clogged up chimney cap (aka "creosote catcher") and you'll have a house full of smoke.

 

[DavidV]

I think it started the day my son brought in wet wood and my wife didn't know the difference. just kept trying to burn and couldn't figure out why it wasn't as hot as usual. I swapped out the wood that night but it was a full day of her feeding the stove with that crap. I think it gave the soot a good place to get started. no matter what the technical breakdown is....and I'll let everyone know, I am running that damned furnace.