Midalake said:
So I am sitting here thinking what would be the best way to quash an over fired stove problem happening or about to happen. How about a halon extinguisher??? Any thoughts....anyone use one already???
Dave
Frankly I think using any kind of fire extinguisher for an "over-fire" is overkill. (A chimney fire is a different mater).
Here's what I do and why I do it.
We all know how hard it is to get a good hot fire with unseasoned wood, on the other hand we also know that really dry wood has a propensity to burn too fast and hot sometimes.
Well, because the wood I have is so dry it's often nip and tuck whether I'll get an over-fire condition happening when I load my woodstove up full for overnight burns, so because it is such a ongoing concern I had to come up with a reliable, yet simple, solution.
First of all. when I load the stove up for long burns, I always take care to watch the temperature gauge for a good while to see if continues to climb, drops, or remains steady before going to bed. Even with the air intake feed closed completely sometimes the stove temp will continue to climb if I loaded in some particularly dry wood, or some of the wood has a lot of resins or pitch in them which will burn like gasoline. If it continues to rise then I know I have the beginnings of a potential over-fire.
There have been a few suggestions already in this thread about how to either starve the fire by plugging the secondary air intake, or open the stove door to allow cold air in to cool the fire, however neither is a great solution if your goal is to let the fire burn on it's own and hit the sack or leave the house.
What I came up with, that works like a charm, is to keep some green (not seasoned) wood on hand and if I notice the stove temp continuing to rise into the "over-fire" zone, instead of remaining steady or dropping, I'll just place one (that's all it takes) of these green logs in the stove and the temperature will, without fail, start to drop. It's that easy, It has worked for me every time so far. No need to throw in any wet rags or douse the fire with fire extinguisher, just place in one unseasoned log and the over-fire condition starts to reverse itself nice and gently.
The one caveat with this system is I must leave enough room for that "one" more green log to fit in the stove.
Anyway, as I said already, because our wood is so dry we face this (over-fire) problem daily, and so everybody in the house is aware of the it and takes preventative steps to see that it doesn't happen, and really the only time it can usually become a serious problem is when loading up a hot stove with dry wood on a large bed of coals. (eg. over night burns)