Stay Warm in Greenville with these Fireplace Safety Tips

The holidays and winter weather have officially arrived in Greenville and there’s nothing quite like a wood-burning fire to get everyone in the holiday spirit.

This winter, stay warm and safe by applying these fireplace safety tips in your home.

Here are six tips to building a safe fire this winter:

  1. Keep your chimney clean: Before building any fires in your home, make sure the chimney is properly cleaned and ventilated.
  2. Wood stove and furnace clearances: All working wood stoves and furnaces require a minimum distance or clearance between the bottom, top, sides and front and back. If the stove or furnace is too close to a nearby object, it can potentially cause a fire.
  3. Replace old stoves: If your current wood burning stove, furnace or fireplace suffered from an accidental fire in the past, it’s important to disassemble the stove, furnace or fireplace and check for any interior damage or damage to insulating material. Any exterior damage or discoloration is a good indicator that the inside of the stove or furnace needs to be examined. Need to have your wood-burning stove cleaned or maintained? Try contacting Cox Masonry (864-582-5772), Blue Sky Chimney Sweeps (864-501-3293) or All in One Insulation (864) 294-8400).
  4. Proper ventilation: The majority of wood-burning stove, furnace or fireplace fires take place because there was not proper ventilation to the system. Keep in mind that just because a wood-burning stove may have a chimney, that does not mean it will have proper ventilation. Light a few small test fires to make sure the smoke travels upward and out the ventilation system.
  5. Use dry wood: Hardwoods such as maple, hickory or oak are the best wood to burn in a wood-burning stove, furnace or fireplace. All wood should be air dried for at least a year before burning. Store your wood in a shed or under a tarp to keep it dry. Dried wood is darker, has cracks in the end grain, and sounds hollow when smacked against another piece of wood.
  6. Remove ashes: Remember to regularly remove ash from the wood stove into a metal contained with a cover and store outdoors.

Stay safe and warm

We hope you stay safe and warm with these wood-burning safety tips this winter. Do you have any safety tips to add to our list or fire safety stories to share? We’d love to hear from you!

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