Anybody have pics of chimney fire damage?

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Like burnt up stove pipe or something, not a pile of ashes where the house once stood.

[haypoint]

Sort of difficult to get a snapshot of the inside of a chimney. If I knew wshat you wanted to know or why you were asking, I might be able to help. I had a chimney fire once and the heat damaged the mortar. This chimney didn't have a clay liner in it. To cool the over-heated chimney the local fire department sprayed water down the chimney, 120 PSI fire hose!. The resulting steam and temperature change ruined the chimney. This chimney was tall, 8 feet in the basement, 9 feet on ther first floor, 8 feet on the second floor and 7 feet in the attic, 3 feet above the roof. I broke it up and hauled the brick and mortar out in bushel baskets. A chimney fire can break up the clay tile liner in a chimney.

[Ross]

It can be tricky to asess a chimney's condition. In a clay tile liner flakes in the clean out are bad but you'd need to rn a camera up to look for cracks beyond that. I have one but no pictures sorry. Wouldn't do you any good you realy can't see problems from top or bottom.

[zookeeper16]

Something like this? http://www.solidflue.com/insuranc.htm

[pheasantplucker]

I should have grabbed my camera two Februaries ago when my neighbor had a chimney fire. There were huge sparks and flame shooting out of the top of the chimney (like a volcano)...firemen got on the roof and started putting it out from up there. About two hours before the chimney fire started, my wife noticed that the neighbor's woodsmoke had a nasty smell to it.

[Quint]

I got to see a chimney fire several years ago and it was nothing less than spectacular. Huge jet of flame shooting out of the chimney with large chunks of flaming debris being shot out of the chimney and dropping on the roof and surrounding yard. I never realized how much force was actually involved in the updraft and everything. It was a sight to behold.

The fire department seemed to take forever to show up. I know I was standing there at least 10 minutes and the people had already called the FD before I showed up.

[comfortablynumb]

http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/i...imneyfire.html
http://www.asweep.co.uk/index.php?page=dummy_2
http://www.vonderhaar.com/images/ch_...big/img_05.jpg
http://www.rain.org/~mkummel/stumpers/07dec01a.html
http://www.chimkc.com/linerdamages.htm
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/217/4...8573af5986.jpg
and a good one
http://www.jamesballchimney.com/services
creative google searching;
http://images.google.com/images?q=ch...hl=en&safe=off

[watcher]

I had never thought about it but a chimney fire would act very much like a ramjet. As the fire burned hotter it would draw more air in which would make the fire burn hotter.

I would think that if you had some kind of air tight shutoff at the base of the chimney you could stop the ramjet cycle. It would probably take several hours for it to die out but it would burn much cooler and not damage the lining. Capping both ends would be even better. Hum. . .I wonder if there's a marketing op there. . .

[comfortablynumb]

empty a fire extinguisher into the open stove door, its drawn up the stack and puts out the fire.
Thats the "firemans solution"Ive read more than once online.

I dont want to test it out of I can help it
lol

[GRUMPY Ole Man]

It's been a spell since I cleaned a chimney as a professional sweep and don't have pictures but I've seen ones that caused very little damage and ones so bad the clay liners began to melt before the fire was put out. It's like Ross said the only way you can really see how bad the damage is is run a camera up thru it and check each tile.

[mdharris68]

I wasn't thinking of pictures when I heard that awful sound................


My first chimney fire happened a few weeks ago. I started the first fire of the year on a cold rainy day and I am glad it was raining fairly hard at the time. I opened the doors of my buck stove, (which is inserted into a rock fireplace with a clay tile liner), and walked away for less than a minute, and I heard this loud roaring sound. I got down on the floor and looked up through the damper hole, and there were large chunks of creosote laying on the ledge that started to burn. I went outside to see flames and sparks coming up out of the top of the clay liner and landing on the semiflat roof next to the chimney. So I climbed up and made sure the rain was extinguishing them. Then I went back in and put a long piece of rebar up inside the damper opening and broke it all loose and some fell in and some went up and out. It didn't last long because my kindling was starting to burn out. I don't think it did any damage to my liner, but if it did, it is surrounded buy 10 inches of native rock and mortar. I think next time I will clean the liner before the start of the year.