NEW SERIES - WOOD BURNERS*

* Just kidding.

I've been concerned for a while at the safety of the wood burners we have in our house. We have an old wooden house and, if there was a malfunction the whole thing would go off like a bomb.

I've seen fires in old houses before - in Papatoetoe in the 1980s and up here 5 years ago. They burn down quickly accompanied by the explosions of glass windows, gas bottles, dry timber and anything else flammable. Not nice.

I've been very careful over the last couple of years, preferring to put on an extra layer of clothing before lighting one of the fires but, just recently we've decided to improve some things around the house. One of the improvements is to maybe put in heat pumps and to get rid of the fires completely.
Before doing this though I thought about replacing the fires with newer models so arranged for a representative of a local fireplace retailer to visit and clean the chimneys and evaluate the safety of the installations.

The result turned out to be not as bad as I thought.
I was prepared to replace the lounge fireplace with a new model and to remove and dump the free-standing Kent in the second lounge. The inspectors arrived today, cleaned the chimneys and gave me the prognosis. The main lounge fireplace was generally OK - just some seals to be replaced and there's no need to stump up for a new one. The check of the flue that runs from the inset appliance up through the chimney though was less encouraging. "It's munted" he said "and, is loose and dangerous". He showed me and it confirmed my nagging fears and suspicions. This fireplace, over the 10 years we've owned our house has had a bit of use and we're lucky that it didn't cause the house to burn down. I told him to give us a quote for replacing the flue and fixing the other bits and pieces. This is pending.

He slapped a 'Dangerous' sticker on it.

The second burner, the Kent was the one that I thought was munted and needed to go to the tip. "No" he said "it's sound and, with some new tiles and a new air feeder it'll last a while. The flue is good to go as well. This fireplace got its W.O.F.

It looks like the exercise will be much cheaper than I originally thought it would be and, more importantly it gives me peace of mind and frees me from worry about lighting the fires when visitors are here.

Soon we'll be back to the cosy (and safer) scenarios of yesteryear.