Thank heaven that it was a mess and not a catastrophe, Susan. I am sorry that you had such a chore today but at least it was easily repaired, even tho it was a tedious job.

Thanks, Lynn. So true. My elderly piano tuner already thinks I don't clean the piano hammers and strings well enough (he's right, I'm afraid). I'll bet he'll have something to say about this! No matter how hard I try, I can't reach all the nooks and crannies of the piano's interior, and I think some special tool must exist for cleaning under the strings. I should Google it.

Thanking God that's all the disaster you had with it. We've had 2 chimney fires, not drastic, but scary and a mess to clean up! The first we took care of ourselves, but the second one we had to call the fire department for.

Tami

Tami, how does a chimney fire happen? I've heard they can set a house on fire, so I'm glad nothing like that happened to you. I'd certainly like to avoid one!

My son and his family were supposed to come over for a New Year's drink (they moved into their new house next door on Christmas Eve), but we decided to put it off until the place was cleaned up. Not good for babies to breathe this stuff.

Now just how OLD is your elderly piano tuner, eh?

LOL Glenda.....I don't know, but I expected him to retire about 20 years ago. He's married, and I always felt sorry for him because his wife won't let him have a cat. When he comes here he loves to pet mine.

Oh my what a mess!!!
You might contact your homeowners insurance. They may cover clean up, as this could be a health hazard.

Gosh, that was hard to read. I'm so sorry. Amen to this year.

oh, MY! what a mess! glad you had another set of hands to take care of it!

What a mess. But it could have been worse. I'm still freaking about the fire in that Conn. house that killed the five people, three little girls and their GPs. My daughter asked my husband if we get a chimney sweep, and he said you're looking at him. He has brushes and chains and gets a bucket or two of black stuff, creosote? every year. Wood stoves are a pain but we've had one for 41 years and I can't imagine not having one and neither can the cats. ..Speaking of elderly piano tuners. My 1706 tall case clock brought over that year from Germany by paternal ancestors stopped running, and we hadn't had it cleaned in 10 years or so and the clock guy was old then. I'm afraid to call that his wife will say he's dead...

Oh dear. What a terrible way to end the year. Here you were trying to do the right thing and it literally back fired! The good news is, you have a clean fireplace now. I hope 2012 starts off much better for you.

"Tami, how does a chimney fire happen? I've heard they can set a house on fire, so I'm glad nothing like that happened to you. I'd certainly like to avoid one! "

Creosote and soot builds up on the walls of the stove pipe and chimney. Nothing much happens until someday when the debis catches fire. The stove pipe can overheat and the chimney may crack. Glowing embers flies out the top of the chimney. These embers have enough substance to set something else on fire, say dried grass or a hayloft.

A chinmey fire is very hard to extinguish. It stops only when it has burned all the soot. Pouring water or water spray down the chimney will crack the masonry. One way to slow the fire is to deprive it of oxygen. Meanwhile, it can set the attic afire through a damaged chimney.

I feel your pain :) We haven't burned wood yet this year and I am hoping we don't. Usually we burn wood all of the time, but husband really isn't well enough to be messing with carrying in logs and taking out the ashes. I am glad you have it nice and clean now. They do make a stick you throw into your stove or fireplace to help put out a chimney fire, probably cuts out the oxygen.

Sue

Susan - thanks heavens that's all it was. But what an awful way to end the year and start the New Year with all the cleaning. How fortunate that your furniture is leather too! How often do you have your stove pipe cleaned?

Our neighbors had a chimney fire on Christmas Eve a few years ago. They let the fire die down and closed the fireplace doors to contain the embers. However at 3 am they smelled smoke and left the house. By the time the fire department arrived the roof was in flames. Apparently there was a missing chink in the mortar between the blocks of the chimney and a spark had ignited the wood in the attic.

When we moved into our home we thought about hiring a company to check the inside of our masonry chimney to make sure all the mortar and firebricks were intact. Instead we decided to install a wood burning fireplace insert and we spent the extra money to have a double walled stainless steel stove pipe run from the stove through the chimney. It also makes it easier for the chimney sweep to run his brushes down a smooth circular pipe.

I burn wood also, I can vision the mess you had!
I get tired of all the dust and work from burning wood but it is nice to see very low electric bills in the winter.

Susan, do you have lots of dust from the wood stove?

As fine as the ash gets that we find from our wood burning stove, I would never trust a vacuum to capture it without clogging a filter instantly. Woody cleans our chimney every year with long handles and a wire whisk thing that is the correct size and shape of our pipe. He pulls the damper out, leaves the door to the stove closed, cleans it from the roof and then scrapes up all the black residue that he forced off the pipe. A tiny bit escapes and covers everything in about an 8 foot radius in black dust, yuk. And it's really noisy when he does it, the dogs hate it.

When we had the house built, we requested the pipe that was super pricey but rated for extremely high temperatures.

As a fireman, he has responded to several chimney fires/house fires. One firefighter uses a chimney nozzle to blow the fire out from above, someone else removes the coals from the stove inside the house. Then they use a thermal imager to make sure there are no hot spots in the walls.

He says that some places sell a product that you can toss into the stove and it will smother the flames in a chimney and stove.

Cleaning a chimney every year is the best prevention, though, and only burn hard wood. Not pine, not cedar.... we mostly burn oak.

We burn locust mostly. flamingo is right, only hard wood. And it has to be dried out. I have heard of people burning all sorts of stuff in their woodburners. Very risky. People even burn treated lumber, ugh, very dangerous.

It was bad enough having that happen to you, just glad it wasn't worse.

He says that some places sell a product that you can toss into the stove and it will smother the flames in a chimney and stove.
We have one like the one in the link and keep it near the fireplace.

Sorry for the mess!

Here is a link that might be useful: Chimfex

Thanks, everyone! I'm going to look into the product that smothers chimney fires. I hadn't heard of it. There's a store that sells woodstoves and fireplace equipment in town; they should have it.

I'm normally conscious of woodstove safety. All our wood comes from our property, and we burn only maple and ash--except for the kindling, which includes sticks of fatwood, whatever they are. The chimney is inspected and cleaned once a year.

As I mentioned above, the present situation was caused by me burning some wood that shouldn't have been burned till next year. Big mistake! We had a chimney fire in the barn many years ago, and at the time--coming fresh from the city--I had no idea how dangerous it was.

Cheryl, it's hard to say if I get much dust from the woodstove because I live on a dirt road and get plenty of dust that way.

Looking at the living room in the light of day, the piano was the hardest hit by far. The whole room will need to be cleaned, though, of course, and I have a supply of microfiber cloths ready to go to work. They look far readier than I. :-)

I'm afraid to call that his wife will say he's dead...

Lily, I felt the same way when I called the last time to have the piano tuned. And now that it's time for another tuning, I feel the same way again. I'll try not to sound surprised if he answers the phone. :-)

You have been given a good explanation of a chimney fire. The first one was right after Christmas, DH decided to burn the wrapping paper. We had the chimflex sticks and used them. The second time was the night before DS was baptized. I can't remember what started it that time. We had to call the fire department. We had a wood burner there, and I'm pretty sure we had the pipe liner. We've been in this house for 20 years, so I can't remember. We have a fireplace in this house, but only use it for the commercial fire logs once in a while. Today, maybe I will use tea lights in the decorative fire screen. It sits in front of the main fire screen and doors. It's too windy to use the fireplace.

Hope the piano tuner is still alive! Good luck with the clean up. I don't envy you.

Tami

We stupidly threw Xmas paper and maybe small cardboard into the woodstove of our last house and the chimney caught fire. Flames were shooting out the top and we went next door to access the situation. But first we closed the damper to smother it. It gradually subsided and we didn't need the fire company but stood watch for a few hours in case. We never had an event in the 28 years we've lived here. The brick chimney is 170 years old and runs thru the house, not on the outside as the new house's chimney ran. We have a long galvanized pipe, but I worry about cracks which could ignite our tinder dry attic. We get about five cords of wood delivered next month green and then dried till the following November.

Susan..Me too. I'll be very happy to hear my clock repair guy's voice but dread asking the wife if he doesn't answer.

I meant to thank Lydia for the Chimfex link. I went from there to Amazon, where I'll order it--along with some granular creosote remover. Nice to shop locally, but the local fireplace shop charges top dollar (and beyond) for everything. Thanks, Lydia!

We had a woodstove in the first house we lived in after we married, and we had a flu fire once. We had a pipe flu from the wood stove up through the ceiling, into the old chimney - the flu caught fire from creosote buildup.

That was the scariest thing I have ever seen. It sounded like a freight train right in the house and the pipe glowed red in spots. I thought it was literally going to explode right into the room. We called the fire department and it eventually burned itself out.

Never again have we had a flu pipe in the house.

That does sound scary! My woodstove is a big Jotul. I don't know the model name, but it was the largest they made back when we bought it many years ago. My DH, who was a chemical engineer and normally extremely safety conscious, used to load it up--really pack it--full of wood for the night. One night I came downstairs around 2:00 a.m. for some reason and found the stove so hot it was actually starting to glow in spots. It scared me--for good reason!--and that was the end of that practice.

DS's first house was a small ranch where the seller bragged about early married years when they converted the gas furnace to burn wood. I've never been sure how THAT worked. (But then this was also the guy who vented the gas-fired water heater into his 'pot' greenhouse, AKA his garage.)