On 3 April 2015 at 08:53, Rossano Gobbi wrote: > In february we had a fire near the vent connector of our fireplace. No > visible fire, but a lot of smoke around the house. Needed to break into > a wall to find fire and estinguish it. > We're still trying to make the smoke smell go away :/ Hope you're luckier= .. > The "scariest" fire I've had in my home happened progressively and on occasion or occasions which were unknown to me when I discovered the results. We have a fully brick fireplace and brick chimney. Notionally a complete brick enclosure that the fire is inside. Now long ago we bought an enclosed steel "woodburner" and fitted it in the fireplace with the steel flue running up inside the existing brick chimney - so fully enclosed within the brick shell. In preparation for installing the woodburner I was sitting inside the fireplace looking out into the room - presumably I was desooting it and generally tidying it up. I found that at my then upper extremes on the front (room side) of the fireplace at the right and left there were cavities about 4" tall x 3" wide (at an inspired guess) disappearing into the brickwork. Digging into these in the confined space I found that each contained charcoal. Digging into that far enough I found wood - the remains of the full width wooden beam that some moronic idiotic imbecilic luckier than anyone deserves to be (fortunately) dolt had use to support the brickwork - perhaps while cement dried. It did not seem essential structurally. It was long enough ago that I do not recall with certainty what I concluded about the outer ends but my recollection is that I thought it went on out into the wall space. I sealed the holes appropriately. I imagine that the very large majority of the time the beam was far enough away from the fire that it did not burn and that it was only during one of the occasional super enthusiastic fires that sometimes happen that it burnt a bit more of the way into the wall space. How many times it happened, when it last happened or if it would ever have produced a house fire I know not. Fortunately. That would have been an interesting one for the forensic investigators to work out :-). Russell --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .