Chimneys

Every home needs warmth, but fire and spark must be contained and directed and managed.  Today, a bit about our friend, the chimney.

It’s the season for chimneys.

Bringing in firewood.  Sitting warm by the fire.  Walking through the neighborhood at night, the wonderful smell of a woodstove, the comforting cozy promise in the chimney smoke. 

Hanging stockings by the chimney with care.  Imagining Santa coming down the chimney.  Leaving cookies on the hearth.  More bounty and blessing, thanks to chimneys.

It’s also the season for chimney fires.  Like the one we had on Thanksgiving night. 

The propane wall heater can warm up our living room, but a fire in the woodstove adds something more than just quick heat.  You walk into a room with a fire in the fireplace and your eyes are drawn like a magnet to the flames.  A hearth is a sacred place, a primitive memory of light in the deep darkness, food and safety in the campfire.  We make fires not just for warmth, but for connection, coziness, memory, smell, crackling, color, beauty.

We usually clean out the long stack of our wood burning stove every year.   Climb up on the roof with the long pole with the stiff round wire brush at the end.  Make sure the doors to the Vermont Casting stove down in the living room are shut.  Push the brush into the stack, run it up and down, hear the built up creosote, hardened ash, tumble down to the stove. 

So what if it’s been a couple years since we did that messy somewhat scary rooftop job?  We don’t have that many fires, it’s been climate change warmer, we don’t close the stove doors and get it really hot which makes more creosote build up, we don’t burn trash like our neighbors do, we only burn dry seasoned wood – excuses, excuses. 

The black stack was glowing red, smoke came out into the living room from the seams of the stack sections, huge sparks shot out from the “spark arrestor” grating at the top above the roof.

Or so I am told.  I wasn’t there. Our adult children, home for the holidays, were in the house preparing dinner for us.  They lit the fire we had laid earlier in the day.  We were driving home from visiting my father.  They called.  “We’ve got a problem here, Mom.  The chimney is on fire.”  By the time we got home (it takes 40 minutes), they had called 911, hosed down the stack, the fire and the roof, and stayed pretty calm. 

We came in to find our friend Scott there from our local volunteer fire brigade, checking out the roof.  All seemed to be ok.  He asked about the construction - double wall? flashing?  He patiently considered and described the possible issues around smoldering ceiling and roof boards.  He conferred by radio with the professional Cal Fire folks who had also responded to the fire and waited with engines up the road.  We all stood around and looked up at the ceiling.  Finally we accepted that there was nothing more to do this cold night.  Scott asked to use our phone.  (Why not use the radio?)  He called his partner Evan – “Hi honey, turn the oven back on, I should be home soon for our Thanksgiving dinner.” 

Our official Thanksgiving dinner was not until the next day.  That night we finally settled down our nerves and adrenaline and had the simple supper they had been making. 

By habit we sat around the stove, but it was cold, and a little wet, and sat empty of wood.  We watched a favorite old movie to calm our nerves.  On Friday we had our good dinner, and the warmth and smells of cooking were a pretty good substitute for the missing hearth coziness.  By Saturday we had taken the stack apart, cleaned it out, made plans to visit the sheet metal folks on Monday, realized they probably make stronger safer stacks since we put this one in 25 years ago. 

Much to be thankful for this season.  And a new stack will be ready for Santa in less than a month.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter