Smoke Detectors and Wood Stoves / Inserts

[firefighterjake]

For us the false positives were boiling pots of pasta water. Triggered the units even when new. Now they are out of the kitchen.

Right on Rick. I test the units twice a year and replace the batteries with fresh ones every fall, whether they need it or not. I also like the units that beep at you if the battery is getting low.

As mentioned kitchens and smoke detectors are a bad combination due to the false alarms.

As for smoke detectors that chirp with low batteries . . . virtually every detector out there offers that feature . . . I believe (but I am not positive) that this may be a standard. Changing out the batteries just once a year like you are doing should alleviate that issue.

 

[firefighterjake]

We have the same family room/kitchen layout that you have. Since I was not in the room when a grease fire set the kitchen on fire a couple of years ago there is now a detector on the ceiling dead on the line between the family room where the wood stove is and the kitchen. The only false positives come from the toaster but I am more than willing to live with that.

Kitchens burn down more houses than wood stoves by a huge margin.

Last statement = 100% true . . . although heating equipment is the top five for fire causes. Incidentally, cooking fires also are the leading cause of fire injuries (i.e. burns and scalds). Of course, many of these fires could be prevented by simply staying in the kitchen while cooking (the leading cause of kitchen fires is due to folks wandering off and getting distracted while cooking . . . particularly in the case of folks frying up food.)

 

[firefighterjake]

Guess that's one good about being a vegetarian . Between chimney fires and a grease fire in the past few years that's enough excitement for a lifetime!

Nah. Chimney fires used to just be part of the routine. In fact when we didn't have one it pissed me off because the chimeny was harder to clean. Grease fire setting cabinets on fire is a whole nuther animal.

I've taught classes here in Bangor where old timers would tell me about stuffing their chimneys full of hay or straw and touching it off to burn out the creosote . . . makes me cringe every time I hear that.

Incidentally, Firefighterjake would be more than happy to share how he and his fellow firefighters extinguish the occasional chimney fire.

First off, as you might guess, most of these chimney fires are due to folks not running their woodstove effectively and not cleaning it.

If you do have a woodstove however the first thing I do is check out the chimney clean out. In most masonry chimneys oftentimes some of the hot ash/creosote falls to the bottom of the chimney next to the clean out. Being careful to not spill the hot ash/creosote on to or near any combustibles . . . open the clean-out door and then put about a tablespoon of water on to the embers. You don't want to place a lot all at once because of course water that is heated turns to heat and steam covers a much wider area than water in its liquid form. The normal updraft often takes the steam up to the chimney and extinguishes it . . . often after a few applications.

You can also take the hose of any A-rated (ABC dry powder or water extinguisher) fire extinguisher up the clean-out and shoot it up . . . once again allowing the natural updraft to carry the chemical up.

Personally I prefer Method A to Method B . . . less of a mess or chance of the powder getting to places where I don't want it to go. Plus I don't have to refill a fire extinguisher.

As a last resort we also will go to the roof and/or use "chimney bombs" (plastic baggies full of dry chemical agent which we drop down the chimney on to the embers) and rattle our weighted chain to knock out a particularly bad chimney fire (and trust me some of them are really, really bad . . . plugged up so bad you wonder how the homeowner even managed to get a fire going.) While we're there we typically clean out the chimney . . . but I don't advise you waiting for a chimney fire to get your chimney cleaned . . . especially since Murphy's Law means that the chimney fire will typically occur at 12 midnight, in middle of a January snowstorm with winds blowing by about 20 mph . . . and oftentimes it seems as though we're going up on to steep, metal roofs. The other reason . . . the chain can and has broken chimney liners . . . ditto for Plan Z which involves sticking a hose down the chimney and opening it up -- too much steam too quickly can result in a broken chimney liner.

 

[firefighterjake]

CO has almost the same density as air so it matters not a whit whether the detector is located high or low. The air and CO will mix and move around the house. In fact if the CO is coming from a heat source it would initially rise because it is warmer than the air low in the room.

100% true . . . for this reason we don't require CO alarms to be at the ceiling height as we do with smoke alarms.

OK, I've been enough of a nuisance on this thread . . . I'll be quiet now and get back to doing some more research here.