well, that was *cough* exciting [<- not a sarcastic cough]
Last night as I was putting the finishing touches on dinner, Geoff offered to light a fire. We have a fireplace insert; we don't use it much, but whenever we do it provides beautiful flickering light and glorious amounts of heat. (Which is why we can't use it during the day! Our offices are a half-level lower than the living room where the fireplace is, and the thermostat is in the living room. So lighting a fire means the furnace will turn off, because hey, it's already 78° in here; but our offices will stay pretty cold, because of course the heat rises and doesn't get to us.)
I thought a fire sounded lovely! But alas. Next thing I know, Geoff is nervously announcing that he's just going to duck upstairs and pull the batteries out of the smoke alarm, because the fireplace insert is producing rather a lot of smoke as the fire catches.
Then it starts to get rather chokey in the kitchen.
I went round the corner into the living room to look. As soon as he realized the scale of things, Geoff had immediately killed the fire as well as he could, of course, but smoke was pouring out around all the edges of the fireplace insert and through the vents at the bottom. The air was becoming grayish-brown, and I could feel my eyes burning a little.
Both the wall and the insert itself felt cool, so we were reeeeasonably confident there wasn't a fire in the wall, or anything. Even the glass window on the insert's firebox was cool; the fire had never really gotten going at all, though after a while we could just make out some glowing bits. And the rate at which the smoke was pouring out did seem to be slowly slowing. But after a few minutes of us standing there warily patting the wall and making worried faces at each other, Geoff said that he'd feel better if we called the fire department, and I agreed.
The fire station is only just down the hill from us, and he told whoever he spoke to on the phone that it wasn't an emergency and there was no apparent fire, but we'd feel better if someone could come check it out. And lo, a few minutes later two (two!) fire engines pulled up in front of our house, lights and sirens at full bore! I felt almost sheepish. And about seven fit young firefighters trooped into our house, laden with full gear: protective clothing, axes, air tanks and masks, the whole shebang. By this time the smoke from the insert had largely stopped, but some was still trickling out, and the air was certainly full of it. The lead guy scanned the wall with a nifty handheld heat detector and saw nothing, asked when we'd last had the chimney cleaned (two years ago, but the chimney sweep said it was practically clean then and we'd lit only a handful of fires since), and scolded us for not having had it checked this fall, since there might be a bird's nest or something in it. He also stolidly explained that if the air in there was cold, the smoke wouldn't rise so well and might come out into the room instead, because heat rises, you see; it's heat that makes the smoke rise. I did not feel in a position to complain about being fire-'splained to, given the situation.
We'd opened some windows already, but he told us to open more, because it's really not good to be breathing that, plus the smell would get into things, so we did. Did I mention it was 6°F that night? I mean, the bitter cold was part of why we'd wanted to light a fire in the first place... So we opened more, and they all trooped out and drove away again, and we toweled up all the puddles of slush they'd tromped in with them; Montreal is a shoes-off-in-the-house culture, but firefighters are naturally exempt from that rule of etiquette! And I wrapped up in another layer and we finally ate dinner in a weirdly chimeric environment; in some parts of our mostly open-plan main floor there was a 6° draft, and in others I could feel the furnace pouring out heat as it struggled to catch up. But thankfully, after about half an hour the air felt clear, and we closed all the downstairs windows, though we left the upstairs ones open until we went to bed. (In the hope that any remaining smoke would, you know. Rise.)
Today Geoff went out and looked, and reported that, notwithstanding our chimney cap, there's a solid plug of snow on the top of the chimney. So, yeah, that might be the problem...
read
comments | post a comment at Dreamwidth
How to use OpenID (optional unless you are commenting on a locked post)
I thought a fire sounded lovely! But alas. Next thing I know, Geoff is nervously announcing that he's just going to duck upstairs and pull the batteries out of the smoke alarm, because the fireplace insert is producing rather a lot of smoke as the fire catches.
Then it starts to get rather chokey in the kitchen.
I went round the corner into the living room to look. As soon as he realized the scale of things, Geoff had immediately killed the fire as well as he could, of course, but smoke was pouring out around all the edges of the fireplace insert and through the vents at the bottom. The air was becoming grayish-brown, and I could feel my eyes burning a little.
Both the wall and the insert itself felt cool, so we were reeeeasonably confident there wasn't a fire in the wall, or anything. Even the glass window on the insert's firebox was cool; the fire had never really gotten going at all, though after a while we could just make out some glowing bits. And the rate at which the smoke was pouring out did seem to be slowly slowing. But after a few minutes of us standing there warily patting the wall and making worried faces at each other, Geoff said that he'd feel better if we called the fire department, and I agreed.
The fire station is only just down the hill from us, and he told whoever he spoke to on the phone that it wasn't an emergency and there was no apparent fire, but we'd feel better if someone could come check it out. And lo, a few minutes later two (two!) fire engines pulled up in front of our house, lights and sirens at full bore! I felt almost sheepish. And about seven fit young firefighters trooped into our house, laden with full gear: protective clothing, axes, air tanks and masks, the whole shebang. By this time the smoke from the insert had largely stopped, but some was still trickling out, and the air was certainly full of it. The lead guy scanned the wall with a nifty handheld heat detector and saw nothing, asked when we'd last had the chimney cleaned (two years ago, but the chimney sweep said it was practically clean then and we'd lit only a handful of fires since), and scolded us for not having had it checked this fall, since there might be a bird's nest or something in it. He also stolidly explained that if the air in there was cold, the smoke wouldn't rise so well and might come out into the room instead, because heat rises, you see; it's heat that makes the smoke rise. I did not feel in a position to complain about being fire-'splained to, given the situation.
We'd opened some windows already, but he told us to open more, because it's really not good to be breathing that, plus the smell would get into things, so we did. Did I mention it was 6°F that night? I mean, the bitter cold was part of why we'd wanted to light a fire in the first place... So we opened more, and they all trooped out and drove away again, and we toweled up all the puddles of slush they'd tromped in with them; Montreal is a shoes-off-in-the-house culture, but firefighters are naturally exempt from that rule of etiquette! And I wrapped up in another layer and we finally ate dinner in a weirdly chimeric environment; in some parts of our mostly open-plan main floor there was a 6° draft, and in others I could feel the furnace pouring out heat as it struggled to catch up. But thankfully, after about half an hour the air felt clear, and we closed all the downstairs windows, though we left the upstairs ones open until we went to bed. (In the hope that any remaining smoke would, you know. Rise.)
Today Geoff went out and looked, and reported that, notwithstanding our chimney cap, there's a solid plug of snow on the top of the chimney. So, yeah, that might be the problem...
read
comments | post a comment at Dreamwidth
How to use OpenID (optional unless you are commenting on a locked post)