Minor emergency that turned out ok this week...
So Wednesday morning I went and fed the cats and noticed the basement was smoky, which has been happening a bit after we set the wood stove. I came back from the back half of the basement and gave the cats their food and looked at the wood stove and heard this WHOOSH and a giant puff of smoke came out from every crack and crevice in the stove and in the stove pipe all the way up the wall. I was duly freaked out at this point. I texted the BF, and went upstairs and took care of a few things. I came back down and the smell was stronger, and the stove did the giant WHOOSH and belched smoke everywhere again. I was freaked out by now. The BF called me, and right about that time the smoke detector went off (finally). I was trying to get that stopped so I could think straight and told the BF I was calling the neighbor who is a former fire fighter. Luckily he's awake really early, it was only 6:45. He came over right away, and says "I see you've got some smoke coming out the chimney, but I see a few embers, you've probably got a chimney fire." He comes in, and says let's check the attic, and there wasn't any smoke there, and so we go into the basement. He checks the chimney again, still has smoke (and embers) coming out. He very gingerly cracked the stove door so it could get cooler and clean air, and it was a hornets nest of sparks flying, so we could barely open the door. He checked the chimney again, and asked for a spray bottle of water. I got that for him, and finally the sparks stopped flying around so bad and he was able to open the door enough that he could start gently spraying the fire with water. He says don't throw a bucket of water on it, that's bad, and he's seen firefighters do it, but it will crack all the firebrick in the chimney from the temperature change which means that the fire can escape through the cracks. So he very gently spritzes the fire, and waits a few seconds, and spritzes it some more. He tells me to go check the walls in my bedroom where the chimney is to make sure that they aren't warm. I hustle upstairs and find them just as cold as usual (really cold...), and then report back to him that it's all good. We let the fire settle a bit, and he checks the chimney again, still got smoke so that's good. We go up and take a look in the attic, and there's a little smoke up there, but it seems that it has drifted upstairs instead of coming from the outside since the wind isn't blowing in the right direction to blow it into the house. We go back downstairs and spritz the fire some more. By this time the BF has arrived, thankfully he was only about 20 minutes away (which was lucky, too, because he could have been on the other side of town). It's pretty much under control at this point, and the smoke is still steadily coming out the chimney. So we keep spritzing the fire to help get it down. The neighbor went back to take his dog out and said he'd check back later. Whew.
The BF tried to leave, and his truck got stuck, he drives and 18wheeler. He managed to get himself out of the mud, and I finally sat down to eat breakfast. I kept spritzing the fire, and was finally able to spread the embers out a bit to get it to burn down even more. After they were beginning to really fade I checked in with the neighbor and he returned to help me scoop out the stove so we could get it to cool off even faster. We just dumped the ashes in a pile in the snow. Thank goodness for snow.
After 3 calls on Thursday I found a chimney sweep that could come out that afternoon! And that was really only because they had a cancellation. Everybody else was booked into February. Oh, and they were cheaper than everybody else, too!
The guy was definitely an odd duck, and he came with 2 younger people with him that were a bit odd, too. But they knew their stuff and I got a lot of questions answered. So all the chimneys are nice and clean in the house. The BF did a good job with that. As far as the stove and stove pipe goes, the older man (who had probably been sweeping chimneys his whole life from the looks of it) we need to make some changes. Firstly, he told me that with the extreme wet weather this year that even "seasoned" wood is not going to be as dry as it should be, and that contributes to buildup. He suggested building a wood rack in the house to keep a few days worth of wood in to help it dry out before it's used. Secondly, he said that the layout of the stove and chimney pipe wasn't good. The stove sits about 18" from the wall, and the pipe comes out of the back, makes a 90 degree turn, goes up the wall, makes another 90 and into the chimney. The BF had already purchased a T joint, so that one end faces down and one end faces up the chimney, with the single side of the T doing into the stove (so a T on it's side). This allows a space at the bottom of the pipe for ash and debris to collect so that it doesn't lay in the actual air flow section of the pipe like ours had with the 90 degree elbow. There's no where for any of the stuff to go except sit in that bend otherwise. He also took a look at the old pipe and said that we'd be better off replacing it completely. Not to mention the lack of the cleanout at the bottom of the T, but he also doesn't recommend that there be a damper IN the pipe, which ours had. He said that it just serves to clog things up over time because anything in the pipe gets caught on it. Then he suggested that the pipe that goes into the wall be shorter, ours was at least 18" long. He said to make it a lot shorter and then there will be less space that the smoke has to travel horizontally before it gets into the actual chimney. He also suggested pulling the stove away from the wall by another foot or so and using 45 degree angles instead of 90 to make it easier for the smoke to travel upward and not get caught in the horizontal spaces so easily. I told him that sometimes it was hard to get an updraft started, and that makes sense with the smoke needing to go in so many different directions. He also said that burning the stove hotter will keep the creosote from building up inside, which is what catches fire in the chimney. He recommended a product called ACS to help keep the creosote down. I asked him about using one of those 'cleaning log' things, and he said not to do it, they don't actually work. He also wouldn't sell me the ACS because he said they charge too much for it, and said I should go online to amazon and buy it buy the case. He said it'll be about 1/3 of the price per bottle than what he sells it for. He also noted some issues with the chimney caps, but we were aware of all of that already. So not bad news at all. The inspection cost about $76, and then we went out last night and got the rest of the pipe, which cost around $100, so that's not a lot of money for peace of mind. Of course, it's not in the budget, but we'll make it work. It'll probably be money added to the credit card, but at this point it has to happen. So once we take a wire brush to the inside of the stove to get the creosote out of it before we start to burn it again, then we can get it set up to run again, right before the next wave of really cold weather hits. He also said not to use anything to permanently connect the stove pipe pieces, at most use a screw, but he said that you really don't even need that. It's best to be able to take them completely apart to clean them rather than keeping them fixed together. I think that was part of our problem, the original one was riveted together so we couldn't take it apart to clean it completely.
So now we know a lot more and can fix things so we can run it again! The place we bought the pipe also had the ACS (not as cheap as amazon, but I figured getting started we needed it), so we'll be able to get it cleaned up this weekend and get it ready to go again before the weather gets bad Saturday.
I'm NOT excited about the weather. Today is above freezing, after about 1" of snow overnight. Tomorrow rain rolls in late in the day, and they're calling for 1-2" with some snow mixed. Sunday morning temps are somewhere in the 40's, but high winds and the temps will be falling to 25 by late in the day, with an overnight low of 7. Monday's high is only in the teens, and then the low drops to below 10 again. Tuesday and into Wed we warm up a bit, but then by Thursday the next system rolls in again with who knows what. The ground is frozen, so even though it's going to be relatively warm before this rain/snow starts, the ground isn't going to let it soak in. I don't know where 1-2" of rain is going to go at this point. I've got chicken duty next week for SR, and he and I talked today about how to manage it so that it's as easy as possible. We discussed where the water shut off is, and what to leave dripping. I'm not even going to let the chickens out, honestly, they won't want to go out in it, and it will be better if their heat stays in anyway. That way I can also stop by to collect eggs early so the eggs don't freeze in the coop, and I won't have to worry about locking them up at dark. Fun times... who knows what's going to happen with the horses, we'll see how it goes.
More recently I caught a story in the news of another building somewhere in Ireland suffering similar fate. 
