INDIANAPOLS (WTHR) - Brrrrr it's cold outside! Just look at these temperatures.
To keep warm inside many of us cranking up the thermostat. Our first real chill of the season.. Will have furnaces racing to keep up.
Sunrise Reporter Matt McCutcheon shows a critical step to keep your home safe winter.
With the chill in the air it's time to make sure your home is warm and safe, not just because Santa will be coming down the chimney in a couple of weeks.
Ashley with the Chimney Safety Institute of America demonstrates what can happen, " What you see here is the tar you get when you burn a wood stove badly. We use this as an example to show our students to have the flue liner inside the chimney can get damaged during the course of a chimney fire."
There all kinds of items in the practice flue as well because a lot of people throw everything into their fireplace or wood burning stove.
"We want to encourage them not to burn trash in the fire place. At Christmas there's the temptation to burn wrapping paper, the Christmas tree, boxes and stuff and that is inappropriate. The chimney simply can't handle it," said Ashley.
The flue is lit will show what happens in a situation where we have a fire and the issues that go on with this because things try to expand to accommodate and that can lead to a big tragedy, "This thermal shock, is what we call it, when the chimney is operating under normal conditions it's no more than a 1,000 degrees. But during the course of a chimney fire that can double instantly."
People who use furnaces have a different issue to worry about, that's more of a soot issue to worry about, "With the soot the concern has more to with blocking the chimney potentially releasing carbon monoxide into the house."
With the fire going in the flue and that is what you want to avoid by having a certified chimney representative come out, The Chimney Safety Institute is based here in Central Indiana, in Plainfield.
The fire wouldn't take long because it is getting up to 2,000 degrees, " It's not at all uncommon for a chimney fire to burn at that temperature."
