Look, Daddy Caught the Vacume on Fire !

[trehugr]

It was pellet stove cleaning day. Spreading out plastic trying not to make a mess of the new carpet and to keep the WAF factor somewhat intact. All was going well until I noticed smoke pouring out of the exhaust port of my craftsman shop vac. Using some creative language and a little fancy footwork, I picked up the unit and headed for the back door, it came unplugged when I got to the back patio. I tore off the lid to find the filter glowing and the contents from my last carpentry mess fully engaged. The best part, was trying to make it to the fire pit through 4 feet of snow before my plastic shop vac melted down.

This is the kind of thing you really hope no one else sees happening. Believing that I got away with my ego unscathed, I turned around to see my wife and my daughters in the window, roaring. Oh well, so much for "don't worry every thing is under control".

Obviously we all know the moral of this story....(I would love to hear some of yours..)

Conclusion, I am even more resolute now to keep all fire out of the house, and the mess that go's with it. The snow should be all gone sometime in early August. At which time I will break ground for the new boiler room !

 

[Stihl025]

I have an old shop vac that I use to suck up ash. I keep about 3 inches of water in the bottom of it to put out any hot ashes. Not that I would intentionally vacuum them up, but they seem to find there way in there. Very effective to extinguish the hot ash and also has kept the filter pretty clean by absorbing the dust. Just change the water weekly or you will start to wonder where the sewer smell is emenating from...

 

[MarcM]

Watched my father suck up a hot coal with the central vac once. Say adios to that central vac cannister. My mom bought him a metal cannister, asbestos bag-lined porta vac after that for cleaning the chimney/around the woodstove...

 

[slowzuki]

The bags on them aren't fine enough to be vaccuming ash anyways, a lot of it gets tossed into the air to be breathed in.

 

[tire man]

As a volunteer firefighter,our department see a few fires every year caused by ashes. A few weeks ago we were at a fire where someone thew out their ashes in the plastic compost bin which caught fire and nearly destroyed a shed containing a lawn tractor and other gardening tools.

 

[Rick Stanley]

I know a guy that burned up an $1100 Kerby in trying to impress the wife with a clean house when she got home. He is a smoker and figured it was faster to suck the butts out of the ash tray he'd been using. It caught on fire and as he heaved it out the front door his wife drove in.