Does this sound like a chimney fire?

[BobsWood]

Just had something strange happen with my Enviro M55C and I'm wondering if it was a chimney fire...

I had just shut the fire place off after having it run for the last 24 hours or so. It's been cold here overnight (-20C), so I've been running high-low with a thermostat of 16-18c more often than usual, but the it still kicks on at heat level 3 quite frequently (at least every hour).

Anyway, I happen to look outside and see a whole bunch of smoke. And sure enough, there's quite a bit of smoke coming from the chimney (more than I've ever seen - usually there is none). Meanwhile in the fireplace itself it looks pretty normal. There's still an orange glow from a handful of pellets still burning in the pot, but no visible smoke or anything else.

Chimney smoke lasts for a few minutes and it looks like heat coming from the chimney despite the stove not being particularly hot at this point. Eventually it dies down, although I then get a bit of a "chemical" smell coming from the stove as the embers finally die out.

So my guess is chimney fire probably? The only thing I'm wondering is I might have seen a black pellet or some other contaminant pour out of my last pellet bag when I was reloading it. Of course I searched and couldn't find it, but I'm wondering if maybe it was something in the pellets that could have caused this... But would then I not have seen more smoke in the stove itself?

Thanks in advance for the thoughts.

(EDIT: I will mention this is an insert in an old fireplace, and I have no visibility of any part of the chimney from within the house).

 

[johneh]

You know when you have a chimney fire
They roar like a fright train going up your chimney
The smoke is thick and black with ash spuing from the chimney
The ash is also red hot embers and after it is over there will be black ash all over the ground
Does that sound like what you had?

 

[BobsWood]

You know when you have a chimney fire
They roar like a fright train going up your chimney
The smoke is thick and black with ash spuing from the chimney
The ash is also red hot embers and after it is over there will be black ash all over the ground
Does that sound like what you had?

Not really - smoke was light colored, no ash, no sound that I could hear...

I'm still not sure after searching around the internet if a fire in a pellet stove chimney would look different than that.

 

[johneh]

I have no idea what was burning the only thing I
have seen burn in a chimney is creosote .
Not true saw a paper wasp nest go up in flames
but again there was some kind of ash.
Because there was no visible ash I would say
the smoke came from the firebox of your stove

 

[BobsWood]

I have no idea what was burning the only thing I
have seen burn in a chimney is creosote .
Not true saw a paper wasp nest go up in flames
but again there was some kind of ash.
Because there was no visible ash I would say
the smoke came from the firebox of your stove

Thanks, appreciate the input.

After cleaning out the firebox I noticed that the agitator might not have been rotating properly, so maybe that contributed to the pellets smoldering more than they should have been.

 

[Washed-Up]

Air intake interference or blockage may cause the same type situation you’ve described also if the agitator is as slow or stuck…incomplete combustion=grey thick smoke