Subject: Re: Building a Gas Forge

From: [email-masked] (Peter Brooks)
Date: 2 Dec 1996 18:48:40 GMT

Fitch R. Williams ([email-masked]) wrote:

: the room air.  He discovered that the reduction in
: temperature of the flue gas causes materials vaporised in
: the smoke to condense out and line his chimmney with
: combustable material.  It builds up for several years until
: it finally makes its way down to where the fire is.  

: It lit off and scared him to death when it burned out his
: chimney and had it glowing read from top to bottom.  He had
: done a good job of installing the chimney and insulating it
: - the house did not catch fire.

: He removed the economizer gadget.

Hmm, drifting a bit, that sounds like the wood stove arrangement that
my former owners had in the fireplace.  Large woodstove, going into the
fireplace through a custom made airtight(kinda) gasket, with the flue
gasses then free to swirl and cool off.  The resultant mess was about a
half inch of crystalized creosote.  My chimney never caught fire, but
10 years later, I still get little bits of creosote coming down.  My
woodstove has a stainless fluepipe the full length.  Around here, most
inserts only have a SS pipe until the smoke 'funnel' necks down to the
chimney.

BTW, my former owner was a fireman.  You'd have thought he'd know better.

Pete Brooks