Refrigerator During Blackouts...

[Martha Ferris]

yuh if you're not prepared to get up on the roof with a chimney brush once a year, maybe don't get a wood fire.

I cleaned my chimney from inside. I just needed a long handle on the brush.

 

[Martha Ferris]

At least you can hire a certified chimney sweep for a fireplace. (We do). Not sure a chimney sweep would be of much use for a stove pipe.

Chimneys have liners made either of ceramic or metal. I hired a chimney sweep one year who did not bother to clean the horizontal pipe and we had a chimney fire. We did it ourselves after that.

 

[Mary Terry]

Chimneys have liners made either of ceramic or metal. I hired a chimney sweep one year who did not bother to clean the horizontal pipe and we had a chimney fire. We did it ourselves after that.

Our chimney is lined with bricks and is probably about 25 feet tall. No ceramic or metal pipe inside it, maybe because our house was built in 1960; the fireplace/chimney is old but in excellent condition.

I do understand why you clean your stove piping rather than rely on someone else to do it after your experience!

 

[Judge]

That's another concern about wood stoves as well as fireplaces. Whatever you burn in them, don't burn "green wood". Wood that simply hasn't been entirely dried out.

Otherwise you risk the buildup of "creosote" inside your chimney which over time can and will catch on fire.

What is Creosote and Why is it So Dangerous? - Chimney and Wildlife

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

As a little girl, we had friends who cooked solely on a wood stove. This is in the high desert of Southern California.

It was very large, oblong. It had four burners on top of the firebox, called spiders, with removable covers. There was an oven in the side next to the firebox.

I remember their mom whipping up eggs for a merengue by hand. Smiling, chattering, and beating a bowl of eggs. It was amazing.

And then baking it in the wood stove was a real art form. It took much longer than baking in a regular oven. And she would turn the pie halfway through the baking so that the side next the firebox wouldn't scorch.

And early in the morning, they would take the spider off the wood stove, and all us girls (there were four) would crowd around the stove in the kitchen with camp forks and make toast. Then their mom would cook us a nice breakfast.

All summer long, they had an outdoor kitchen, on the back patio, where the same thing would happen, but outside instead, meanwhile their dad would take the wood stove out to the garage for blackening.

I've been trying to get back to that kind of life for decades now. But it isn't really possible without money.

 

[Mary Terry]

That's another concern about wood stoves as well as fireplaces. Whatever you burn in them, don't burn "green wood". Wood that simply hasn't been entirely dried out.

Otherwise you risk the buildup of "creosote" inside your chimney which over time can and will catch on fire.

What is Creosote and Why is it So Dangerous? - Chimney and Wildlife

And never, never burn pine, cedar or any other soft wood in a fireplace or stove. Seasoned hardwoods only!

 

[Crossbreed]

Our back-up generator (which had been on an extended back-order) was finally installed this week.
We can not check it in a winter setting, but will let the house cool on the next low-temperature evening and see how well everything runs in backup mode.

 

[Crossbreed]

My furnace shuts down with an error code when the generator is on, but I will see if they will fix it, first, before writing a negative review.

 

[Crossbreed]

My furnace shuts down with an error code when the generator is on, but I will see if they will fix it, first, before writing a negative review.

In August, the generator tech made some changes to our system.
I repeated the furnace test last night and it did not fail after running for 60 mins.