Fire!

So, after a long, long time, I have finally finished the front room! it only took about 18 months and the last piece was the fire. It was supposed to be sorted for last winter, but that didn't happen, but it is ready for this winter!

I dong have any pictures of the first part of the work, as it involved me up on a set of roof ladders, manhandling a six flexible flue liner down the chimney, which is only about 7 inches wide and not overly straight. As you can imagine, trying to get 6 meters of liner down the chimney and not fall off the roof took all my effort and photos were pretty much the last thing on my mind. The wife helped out as well and I would have loved to get a picture of her standing at the bottom of the ladder, with hard hat with attached ear muffs! She was worried I would kick a tile or something down. But no, I survived, didn't break any roof tiles and managed to get the liner down and the chimney pot in place, although there was a point about a meter from the end where I thought it was all going to go horribly wrong. The liner stuck solid and I had to try for several minutes to try and jiggle it around, moving it up and down as best i could. All that seemed to happen was that it stretched and compressed rather than actually moved and I was getting quite worn out by all the physical effort. You couldn't grab it from the bottom either as it was just to far up the chimney to grab by hand, lucky though all the jiggling worked and the liner shifted and slid the last meter or so in to place. 

Above is the liner fitted to the stove pipe with register plate in. The liner is untrimmed from its original length, my calculations were a little off, I was planning on it reaching down to the bottom of the picture and then trimming it to length. As it happens its actually exactly the right length for what I wanted, which was great! If it had been shorter I dong quite know what I would have done as we ordered it about a year ago and I'm not sure they would take it back!

In order to get the plate in I had to channel out the sides of the chimney, using a couple of sds chisel bits. I went to jewson's to get them originally, but at over a tenner for one I decided against it but as I left I noticed the local shop next door (its a big local shop, bigger then the jewson's ) and they had makita bits for less than 3 quid each! Excellent, point and half inch chisels bought for just over 6 quid including vat! They made mince meat out of the chimney breast.

There is now a straight section and angle (135?) with door section installed beneath the plate. The door in the angle section should allow me to sweep the chimney with out having to worry about getting the front room dirty. Ill need to buy an new brush head for the rods and I will have to install some sort of access in to the garage, but as the hole needs bricking up anyway, that shouldn't be a problem.

Before anyone asks, the stuff around the pipe at the bottom is glass wool, a inert mineral wool that won't burn at all and is a good insulator. I know it went burn as its the stuff that i recovered when I took the last fire out and while some of its a bit discolored, its not burnt at all.

Ready to rock and roll

I have only had the fire on once so far, just to test the flue and joins and also to "fire" them or set them, as per the instructions. The fire cement around the register plate didn't quite get fired, it didn't get hot enough, but being as its in the position it is and its a inset fire I dong think it ever will get as hot as its supposed to, as the only heat is comming from the radiated heat given out by the flue, which was roasting.

I would add that I did smoke test the fire before I did the first burn and we have carbon monoxide alarms in the room, so it want a completely blind test of its integrity.

Fire in full swing

There will be some experimenting with the fire over the next few weeks, as I play around with the settings to find out where it burns best abc gives off the beat amount of heat. As were burning spare wood and off cuts, the quality and type of wood will vary, so it will be interesting to see how this effects the fire and heat output. There are several lumps of aged oak and what looks like mahogany in the pile as well, so they will be interesting to burn! Either way, were finally ready for winter!