re: #81 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

Cleaning the flue is a good idea, though. Reduces the chances of chimney fires.

(My friends lost their house from a chimney fire. They had used the fireplace all day, but let the fire die out as they went to sleep. Smoke alarms roused them out of bed a few hours later. They survived, but the house was a loss.)

I had a chimney fire at a house I lived in outside of Gunnison, CO. Turns out the damn chimney hadn’t been cleaned in years, the creosote was a couple of inches thick. Fortunately we caught it in time, we had the fire out before the fire department showed up (the house was several miles from town, if we had waited for the fire department to come and put the fire out, it would have been a lot worse, took them 20 minutes to get to the house!). They doused it again anyways and flooded the living room. Our landlords put us up in a hotel for three days to clean up and clean the damn chimney. That was some scary shit!