almost had a house fire

Dave

Dave

Well-Known Member
we live in a duplex. diana and i are on one side, he sister, mother and nephew on the other. her nephew came home from work for lunch and noticed the house was full of black smoke. not so thick you cant see anything, just thick enough to make the air look grey. he traced it to the furnace room and by his own admission stupidly opened the door where he was greeted with a thick puff of ash. first thing he did was hit the emergency shut off switch for the furnace. it looks like there was a fire cooking in the exhaust vent for the furnace. we did a check in the room and nothing else was involved. seems the furnace thermostat was set at 70. the weather turned suddenly from cool to hot and humid in about 2 days so the AC was also running which must have dipped the temp low enough for the furnace to kick in.
the exhaust vent must have been clogged. we've had problems with bird nests in the past, but i hadn't noticed them this year. the smoke backed up into our unit so now we have to have all the windows open and all our fans facing out.
going out to home depot later to get a couple of smoke detectors for the rooms adjoining the furnace rooms. we already have 2, one on the 2nd floor landing and one downstairs in the living room, but the smoke didn't get thick enough to set either one off.
 
:eek5: You need BETTER smoke detectors...mine go off at the far end of the house if I make the toast too dark...Glad it wasn't worse news.....
 
Wow, I'm glad all of you are ok. That's probably going to be messy too when all that ash settles all over the place. Ever see a puffback? I've never seen one but I heard they're terrible.
 
I once had both my brothers staying with me in a one bedroom flat. My youngest brother was sleeping in the box room - 9 x 4.5 ft. One night he lit a candle to read by and forgot about it until the smoke alarm went mad. It had burnt down and melted through the PLASTIC holder he'd put it on and set the BOOKS alight that it had been resting on. Fortunately no-one was hurt. Needless to say he had some serious cleaning up to do, not to mention repainting the boxroom! :(
 
My youngest left a citronella candle burning on top of his entertainment center and fell asleep. They flare up like crazy at the bottom ...set off the smoke alarm and I ran in to find the flame about a foot and a half high....Blistered the furniture, broke the little glass holder, and scorched the walls...He slept through it... :retard:
 
True story...I was about 7 taking a dump in a cabin/duplex/hotel we were staying in on vacation in Wyoming or Colorado. The fire alarm went off because the waterheater next door exploded and started an electrical fire. I've never heard my mom beat on a door as hard as she was to that bathroom door. I remember trying to decide whether I should run or finish. :retard:

Other than that....not much exciting has happened to me. I set mine off every now and then because its right outside my bedroom which is right next door to the bathroom (I take very hot showers). We've set the upstairs one off a few times too. Its right next to the alarm's smoke detector. I'm glad that we've never set the alarm off because of it (too many questions get asked), but on the other hand, its scary that it never goes off when the other detectors go. I keep telling myself its because its more smarter to my dumb doings...or something. :retard:
 
My brother came home drunk one night and dumped the ashes from our coal stove in the plastic garbage cans on the side of the house. They smouldered for a while till they melted the siding on the house and it went up in flames. My sister Rose and her friend Kristen and me and my friend Cindy were all sleeping in the room next to the fire. Rose woke up because she heard "popping" which was the siding popping off the side of the house. We all ran out in the middle of winter in just our nightgowns. That really sucked. Thank God nobody got hurt. Just one of the many retarded things my brother did as a result of drugs and/or alcohol. :rolleyes:
 
well, they got the furnace room cleaned up. took them a few hours. now they need to get a chimney sweep in to clean out the exhaust vent, then have the furnace people come in and clean that up. it looks like it will take them some time to get the rest of the house cleaned up. there is a fine residue on most of the surfaces. we didn't have as much smoke on our side so there isn't that much of a cleanup to do. the cobwebs have been nicely highlighted for us. :)
 
I was gonna put up those fake cob webs last Halloween....But by the time I knocked all the real ones down so I could....I was too tired... :retard:
 
I've always got to be on the lookout for potential sources of fire. Brandi's been a bit skittish about fire ever since the time she had to stand in the street and watch her family's house burn down.
 
Spot said:
there is a fine residue on most of the surfaces. :)
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My brother made the mistake of trying to wash that off the walls, which is why he ended up repainting them as they went a delightful shade of grey. :)
 
ashs in a plastic rock bucket

I did that once greenfreak ........i put ashs from the fireplace into a plastic bucket the ashs were 4 days old needless to say it wasn't enough time. I put the plastic bucket outside and within a hour or so I noticed that the back yard was brighter then it should be ...the plastic bucket was blazing flames 6 foot high.

So you don't have to be one drugs or alcohol to make that mistake! Dam ashs were 4 days old too.
 
It's amazing how heat can smoulder for so long and cause a fire hours later, isn't it? Crazy. Good thing all it was was a bucket, huh? I'm surprised it didn't melt all over the place.

My brother's only chore was the coal stove. He had to 'shake it down' every night to get the spent ashes into the trays, take the trays (which were hot enough to burn you if you touched them with bare skin) out to the backyard and put the ashes in a metal bucket that was sunk into the ground. This way, the metal isn't going to melt or catch fire and the ground cooled the ashes. After a day of that, he would use the ashes to melt snow and ice on the driveway and sidewalk.

So there was a definate system to it but since he was drunk and not able to really use his judgement that well, he put the ashes in the easiest place-the garbage cans. Call it bad judgement enhanced by alcohol then. :)
 
Nixy said:
Did the house burn down? :eek:
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Just the left side of it. The room used to be a one story garage and we converted it into a tv room so it wasn't a bedroom on fire or anything. Thing is, that's the room where the front door is so we all had to run through the room on fire. The fire department came pretty quick and put it out so all we had to do was repair that one wall of the room.
 
Aunty Em said:
Did you put a backdoor in after that? If that was my only way out I would.
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We had one already but to get over the 6' fence, we would have had to use the side of the house that was on fire and it was pretty narrow. I guess if we had to get over it, we could have. The fire hadn't reached the inside wall and I guess you just don't use your best judgement in situations like that sometimes. :shrug:
 
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