Avoided a diaster!

JayinNY

Well-known Member
I went to the barn early this afternoon, it's windy as heck here, and 14 degres out so I figure I get horses in an hour earlier. I get home feed cows,and go in basement to warm up, take ashes out of wood stove, then to lock up hens. Walk out of my basement to dump ashes on the Icey driveway, I look toward my brothers house to the east of me, and I see a glow, I thought the moon looks funny, than I realize he had a chimney fire. As I'm walking up my back yard calling his phone, he comes out of his house, about 250 feet away, I yelled your chimineys on fire, wind musta carried my voice, he heard me and bolted inside to close the wood stove damper. Well we went on the roof and watched, make sure no sparks caught the roof on fire, after about 1/2 hour everything looked ok, I think he dident clean the chimney enought, for that much creosote to build up. He was glad I was outside and saw it! Locked up the hens and I'm trying to thaw out now, the wind on the roof was unmercifull.
 
That very well could have had a much less happy ending. Glad it all worked out OK. I've never had a chimney fire, but while I was active in the VFD here, we responded to dozens of them. Most, you'd know something was up by the roar inside the house.
 
We had a couple of them when I was a kid- one when parents were away, 13 year old sister was in charge. Luckily, I'd been around when we had one a few years before, so we got a ladder and the garden hose hooked up, I crawled up the ladder and sat on the roof, keeping it wetted down, until fire burned itself out. Wasn't any such thing as a fire dept. out in the boonies in those days, you just did the best you could.
 
That's what I thought, when I pulled in the driveway I dident see anything, and i always look, at his chimney, my own and the guy across the road, I wasent home more than 5 minutes and there was flames, so ya lucky it wasent going for any length of time.
 
Glad you didn't have any serious loss. But it would be a real good idea to have a good chimney sweep come in with a camera and inspect that chimney for cracks in the liner. Lots of times a fire that hot will start some cracks in the terra cotta liner that can be dangerous.
 
(quoted from post at 02:58:50 02/18/13) Glad you didn't have any serious loss. But it would be a real good idea to have a good chimney sweep come in with a camera and inspect that chimney for cracks in the liner. Lots of times a fire that hot will start some cracks in the terra cotta liner that can be dangerous.

Do what Paul says! Chimney sweep found lots of cracks in ours with his camera, he speculated the previous owner had a chimney fire but didn't do anything about it. He was a cheap skate (and a crook as we later found out) and we were not surprised. We had them put in a stainless steel liner with a top damper. PO had cut the mounting tabs off the bottom damper when they put in a wood stove so had to go with the top damper. It draws real nice now. When we did the repairs for the tree hitting the chimney we put one in for the other flue that vents the oil-burning boiler. HVAC guys say it has never drawn better. We don't have to worry about either flue now.
 

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