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Show By Jack Wallis J ith the wood-burning stove almost 3ng the place of the heating system iany homes the danger of home i is increasing. (me of the fire hazards of woodsy wood-sy aing stoves are due to careless in-lation in-lation that ignore safety re-ements. re-ements. Some of these include plac-the plac-the stove too close to burnable --TSstances, inadequate flues or $4meys near flamable materials, ineys that do not extend high f igh outside the building, or hearth . j.s which are too small, and many 8 ie danger we experienced first 59 jl, that can happen to any wood- gin& stove no matter how well it is fjMled, is a chimney fire. "'ie other day we built a quick hot fire stove and then turned down the Ijjfct to slow the fire down. All of a sud-we sud-we heard a loud roar, like when a ""Ve amount of paper ignites all at J J. Upon looking inside the stove we J d see that the stove wasn't making roar. The roar got louder and louder 1 someone passing by stopped and us we had fire coming out of our k chimney. Sure enough, a huge ie was coming out of the chimney, de the fire sounded like a huge 'torch and outside it looked like an rted rocket getting ready to take tie burning inside the chimney went or what seemed a long time, too for comfort. It lasted about 15 utes and then took about 30 more to j Uy die down. We could hear popping 1 1 crackling and could see black ! es flying out the chimney. "om this experience we learned -hand how extremely flammable substance is that collects in the """lneys of wood-burning stoves, ffflfe have burned a lot of pitchy-pine. After getting a good fire started, we usually turn down the draft and let it smoulder to make it last for a long time. This situation caused a creosote substance to collect along the inside walls of the chimney. If you look inside the chimney this substance looks like a shiny dark red varnish. After this substance builds up so much it either has to be cleaned out or it will catch fire and burn out. If it burns out the blastfurnace blast-furnace chimney fire may damage the chimney or may even catch the building on fire because of a leaky and overheated chimney. There is also the danger that the hot sparks may land on the roof of the structure and cause the roof to catch on fire. The best way to prevent a dangerous chimney fire is to have the chimney cleaned regularly by a chimney sweep, which by the way we now have available in the Vernal area. A sweep will use brushes and tools to dislodge the accumulation of flammable material that collects on the walls of a chimney. Another way to avoid dangerous chimney fires is to purposely start a chimney fire at regular intervals before the creosote build-up becomes excessive. ex-cessive. A hot fire with some "Red Devil" every month or two will burn out the creosote a little at a time. Also, changing the type of wood being burned will help. After burning pitchy-pine pitchy-pine for awhile, trade off with some Cottonwood Cot-tonwood and this will help keep the creosote build-up from forming. The thing to remember is that wood-burning wood-burning stove chimneys need maintenance. It is better to clean them out once in a while than to have the job done automatically when the build-up becomes too great. The latter method may clean out more than just the inside of the chimney, it may clean off the entire en-tire premises. |