Smokey

Last night I filled the woodstove up and retired for the night. It had been a bit of an odd night. First off, I heard screaming downstairs. I was cleaning my room. I rushed down and there was a lady in my living room asking my kids where a certain person lived. (I forgot to lock the door). Tibbles was freaking, Gibbles was stunned. She had visited the wrong address. They thought it was Button Boy. Then, I went back upstairs to organize, and I heard screaming again. The kids thought that there was a ghost. In the corner of the room towards the ceiling, they saw flashes of green light. There was also a bad smell. . .unfortunately it was not a ghost but my dryer had kicked the bucket and there was an electrical outburst. So after sending the kids up to bed, I decided to go to sleep. At around one in the morning I smelled chimney. I figured it was just the wind. A bit later, I really smelled a bad odour coming from the wood stove. I went downstairs only to discover back draft, oodles of smoke had been flooding my living room. For some reason neither the smoke detectors, nor the carbon monoxide detector had alerted me to the smoke. Thank goodness for nostrils. Since the wind was so gusty outside (upwards of 90 km's an hour), I figured I needed to add more wood to create a hotter fire which would in turn keep the gusts out of my house. (Thinking that the positive outflow of heat would counteract the negative down draft). I added two pieces of hardwood, and the fire caught quite well. Things seemed fine for a few minutes when suddenly wind gusts blew more smoke inside the house. Now, my chimney runs through the house, it is clay lined block. It does have the clearance needed on the roof. So, since my clearance is good, I knew that this was a fluke. I decided to bring in the metal trash can, and remove the wood that I had put in. I capped of the can, put it in the tool shed (which is a concrete shed), and still, watched hopelessly as smoke filled the house. I opened the window next to the fireplace, then went upstairs to open the windows on my side of the house. After watching the fire dwindle down to a few coals, I decided since it had been a couple of hours, that it was safe to go back to sleep. This morning, the same thing was happening, and although it seemed to happen coincidentally with the wind gusts, I decided to make my way down to the chimney clean out in the basement. It looked empty, but when I shoved my hand up in it, a load of coal like stuff and ashes came tumbling out. After sticking various things up into the base of the chimney (auger, old shower head and tubing, a curtain rod, plastic aquarium tubing), the result was about a garbage bag and a half of crap. What a pain in the ass. It just goes to show you, your chimney may be clean, but your clean out might not be. Always shove your hand up there just in case, and don't rely on a visual check. After trying to remove the contents of the chimney, I stunk terribly, I had a bath, and it was like "Smudge the Chimney Sweep" out of a Richard Scary book. The bathwater was black. Between being burned three times this week, and now this, I look like I work in a fish factory. I never can keep a manicure pristine. So, in essence what happened was, when Addled swept the chimney, he pushed all the crap down. We thought, because we had cleaned it in the spring, that the chimney was still clean. All the crap had built up at the base of the chimney (well a little higher), and kept building up. So, it actually started covering where the woodstove ties into the masonry chimney, and was not allowing the smoke to escape correctly, but was allowing the wind to blow down. Update. I think the clog is a bit further up. I can't get to it without detaching the woodstove from the masonry chimney. Adam wanted to sweep it from the roof. I said that insurance wouldn't cover stupidity in 90 click winds. The only way he is allowed to go is if he wore a helmet. So he is not going out there. Figures, on one of the coldest days of the year, I would have chimney problems.