North53, are you in a region where the climate is so dry that a cigarette butt carelessly discarded is likely to start a fire in general? If so, I think probably people shouldn't be tossing cigarette butts around. If not - if it isn't just really very very dry - then I think the chance a cigarette but will light wood mulch is miniscule.

Here, in Missouri, I can't imagine getting a cigarette to light woodchips even if I had a full pack of cigarettes, very fine woodchips, and a lot of time and focused energy.

Now, there are places where it is important to have firebreaks to keep forest fires away from homes - if you're in that kind of place, I'd respect that ... but I think that'd mean not having shrubs in that space either!

Here in my climate zone [semi-arid] wood chips used as mulch, very quickly 'cook-down' and compost. The dump-truck full that I got last Aug. is nearly all gone ... morphed into soil and compost. The point is that you won't have to worry about those chips for much longer if they are on soil that is watered. As lcpw said, if you are in a drought situation, tossing a cigarette/match will carry a stiff fine ... it does around here.

Wood chips + exposure to smoking public = a risk too great for me.

Lloyd

? + exposure to smoking public isn't too great a risk for you?

Lol...DW smokes, must be careful what I say, (coff, hack) but I get your point.

;-)

Lloyd

If the planter is made of concrete it may not be much of a risk even if it does start to smolder. Of course this is from the perspective of someone who prefers a wax based fire-starter to get the wood fire in our stove going! Seriously I think wood chips on soil will be too damp to easily catch fire even from a ciggie butt.

It was probably a valid thought on there end but I really think I would have a hard time lighting my chip pile with a lit match chips really tend to stay pretty moist

Zone 1 doesn't your planter have snow on it 11 months of the year (:

If the wood chips are allowed to become dry enough then a cigarette still lit could, possibly, cause those to start to burn. One of our assignments in on of the Arson schools I attended was to use a cigarette to start a pile of leaves on fire, something we could not do but something known to happen, frequently. I have seen planters, mulched with wood chips, with evidence of a smoldering fire due to a carelessly discarded cigarette into that mulch, but the mulch was very dry when that happened. A properly maintained planter with the normally moist mulch will not allow that to happen.

Okay, I'm getting the feeling we should have researched this idea better before proceeding.

The people who I'm most concerned about are a rather large group of 'street people', none of whom would be careful or one bit bothered by a fine. In fact, I have the distinct impression that some of them have been sleeping in the planter. And of course, the beds aren't "properly maintained" which is why we were mulching in the first place.

Lloyd, you are making me very nervous.

Our summers tend to be quite dry. I have had wood chip mulch in my yard for years and it is still intact. Bear in mind that this is not shredded bark mulch, but actual wood chips from the sawmill.

I guess it will be a reason for the municipality to water the beds?

Btw Jonas, I'm choosing to ignore the snow comment, lol.

If your summers are so dry, do you have a lot of grass and brush fires? That kind of material will flame up much faster than wood mulch.

I'm getting the idea from your description that this is pine chips from the planers at the mill, that are often sold as livestock bedding? About 1/2" to 1" square, and fairly thin, rather than the big chunks you get in bark mulch. If so, they are likely more flammable than big bark chunks, but I still think this could be much ado about nothing.

Are flaming concrete planters a big safety issue in North America?

What's the worst that can happen if one does start smoldering, or even flaming up?

Having lived in Thompson and doing the dumba$$ thing of putting woodchips under my deck for weed suppression, I'm not comfortable using wood chips in very many applications.

It has been my experience that dried out leaves and other materials gets mixed in. All it takes is a dry spell like we had in '89 and some doofus chucking his butt into the planter and poof up she goes. If it's the dried out pine chips from the mill, I'd not use it myself especially near any structures but to each his own.

Lloyd

P.S. I have a two hundred gallon water waggon with a PTO driven pump and two 50 foot garden hoses on standby during dry spells. Our volunteer fire dept is good but it's 10-15 minutes before they could get here and get a hose deployed.

So just mulch with compost. It looks like soil but doesn't work like soil. And believe it or not it does suppress weeds if thick.

My partner works at a store in an outdoor mall here in Pittsburgh and the fire department has been called twice for smoke in the store that came from smouldering mulch due to a cigarette butt.

We don't live in an exceptionally dry environment, considering we are LA transplants where brush fires are common due to careless cigarette disposal.

Can you just make sure the mulch is damp?

-v

In my climate you couldn't start wood chips on fire with a lit match, let alone a cigarrette butt.

I really hate people who toss cigarette butts.