We had a chimney fire scare last night.

It was a cold night, -14’ish with a much colder windchill, so I filled the firebox with wood, turned it down, watched it off and on for 20 minutes to make sure it wasn’t going to get too hot, then I went up to bed.

15 minutes later all the smoke detectors were going off.

Jeff ran out of bed (he had been asleep).

I grabbed clothes and put them on and turned the lights on as I ran downstairs.

The basement was full of smoke. I chased a terrified Monty around (he hates smoke detectors) and had to drag him outside into the fenced yard by his ear.

Then I ran downstairs. Jeff had ran outside and saw sparks flying out of the top of the chimney. The stack, above the stove, was measuring 1400° WAY WAY WAY too hot.

Jeff grabbed the ash bucket, put on the fire gloves, and pulled out firey logs. He was naked, so I put on the gloves and ran the bucket of fire outside. The leather bbq gloves are extra thick and long and cover most of my forearm. Sparks were flying off the logs that were fully in flames.

By the time I hit the back stairs to run outside, I knew the pail was getting too hot, but if I dropped the pail of fire, we were going to be in worse shape so I decided to sacrifice my fingers.

I ran out in the snow and tossed the burning logs out of the bucket and ran inside and took out some more logs.

Jeff ran around checking the walls to see if they were hot and if we indeed had a chimney fire.

I knew the fire department is a long way away, and are volunteers that aren’t sitting at a fire station waiting for a call, so if our house was going, it was going.

We plugged in our big fan and tried to blow the smoke out the basement walk-out, but with such a temperature change I don’t think it was doing much.

My fingers are luckily okay. They don’t look burned, but they are red and overly sensitive now.

Over the next hour the temperature came down to normal levels in the wood stove. No more sparks were seen coming out of the chimney top, but the entire house was full of an awful thick smoke.

We stayed up until 2am making sure we were safe.

This morning Jeff called our chimney guy and he was able to stop by first thing this morning to inspect for damage. His guys had just cleaned out the chimney a little over a month ago.

He took apart the pipes and said we got really lucky. He said we probably didn’t have a chimney fire and the sparks were just flying those 3 stories up and out of the top. He said we got really lucky, and everyone should have a good scare like that to keep them on their toes.

What went wrong? We aren’t sure. Maybe a bunch of things. The chimney man said he closes the damper almost completely at night and has the same stove. So the fire was getting too much air. Plus it was a very cold windy night, and I know from last year, that cold air that comes in the air supply vent for the wood stove always seemed to have more oxygen in it when it was cold. It always seemed to make a hotter fire. The firewood we’re burning right now is also much smaller than our wood last year so there were more gaps between the logs and that makes a hotter fire too.

The chimney man said I could start up a fire right now, but I think we’ll pay to run the baseboard heaters today while we’re at work, and maybe get brave enough to restart the fire tonight.

In the meantime, everything we own reeks of smoke. The chimney man said it was probably burning paint from off the exhaust piping. He said it is really hard to cause damage though because they test those wood stoves by filling them completely with wood, leaving the damper open all the way, and then testing to see if anything fails or gets too hot. If they do, then they aren’t sold.

I learned a few lessons though. I should have Monty’s leash and collar on a hook beside the door. We should get two pairs of the fire/bbq gloves so we both can have their protection if we have to pull logs out of the fire again. I will continue to keep a set of sweat pants and a sweater beside my bed. Socks would have been nice but we didn’t have time to think about the snow in our Crocs.

Just a few weeks ago, Jeff had rewired all of our smoke detectors to be on the same circuit so they would all go off at the same time. And he specifically got ones with battery back up. I heard the first one go off in the basement. I thought it was on tv because I was watching a home renovation show. Jeff shot up in his sleep and then a second later the upstairs one went off. They probably went off for 10 minutes. Jeff flipped their breaker, but they all had batteries that had to be disconnected.