Chimney Fire

[Farmerjw]

My parent's first woodburning stove was a Franklin.  The most inefficient, wood burner (and it burnt a lot without returning much heat).  When they remodeled the front of the house they bought a "Mama Bear" stove.  Think the Papa Bear was larger and there was a smaller one.  The lady told my folks they didn't need the Mama Bear based on house plan and insulation.  Based on the Franklin they "knew" better.  Well that Mama Bear would run you out of the house without breaking a sweat.  They replaced the Franklin with a much smaller wood burner that pretty much heated the whole house with a little help from the Mama Bear on the coldest of days.  Technology changes really made a difference.  The amount of heat felt and wood burnt was amazingly different. 

[WV Sawmiller]

   I was working in southern Norway '87-'89 and noticed they used a lot of small wood burning room heaters. In the USA I have always seen larger central area woodburners more commonly used. I know I have a great big one down in the basement. In Norway the wood was generally cut into sections about 1' long and if they were 4" in diameter they would split them 4 ways. Our Norwegian daughter (Former exchange student) showed me the technique they use to see if the wood was dry enough was to blow through it. Most of the wood they burned was birch. They would drag the trees to a landing, set up a bunch of rollers, and roll them to a cut off saw (Buzz saw type) run by a PTO on a tractor. Looked pretty dangerous to me. They would palletize and shrink wrap the wood to make up about 1 cubic meter for sale.

   Being a Socialist country they also had community councils who oversaw certain services. One of these was chimney sweeping. You would get a notice when the sweep would be there and you needed to be there or have someone to assist and allow access. I guess part of that was because the homes were largely built of wood and close together in tight clusters in the valleys and a fire in one was a risk for several.

[jdonovan]

if you've got a sizeable chimney fire going, then discharging a dry chem into the fire box should get the powder to get pulled up the chimney.

if you want to be pre-ready, get some zip top bags filled with dry chem and you can drop them from the top. The heat melts the bag open, and they they disperse the powder near the bottom and gets carried up by the draft.

If you use water, the result is almost always a cracked flue due to spot cooling where the water stream hits. Cracked flue's are better than losing a home, but is about the bottom of the list for extinguishing choices.

In the picture, it looks like about 1/3 up on the left I can see flame through some missing mortar.

[WV Sawmiller]

In the picture, it looks like about 1/3 up on the left I can see flame through some missing mortar.

   Yes. I mentioned that in the caption under the picture. Mortar was probably an inch thick there. Dropping powder down the chimney would have been impossible when we first arrived as flames were shooting out 3-4 feet. By the time we took the picture the flames had largely died down.

[Brucer]

Brucer, what you experienced with your Fisher stove is a common problem with wood stoves. People install a system that is just too big for their normal heating load....

I actually sized the Fisher appropriately for the size of the house. I have an air circulation system that moves the hot air from ceiling level to the rest of the house. What I overlooked was the fact that the Fisher is a radiant stove and the heat is transferred to every surface that's in line with the stove. I also didn't realize the limited output range with their damper system.

The stove I replaced the Fisher with is a convection stove. Most of the heat rises directly upward to be captured by the circulation system. It also has 5 times the output range. As far as overall heat output, it's actually the same size as the Fisher was.

With my Fisher stove I could only burn about half a cord of wood a year if I didn't want to risk a chimney fire. With my current Pacific Energy stove I burn 3 cords a year and that's all I need for daytime heating.