Santa's Friend Chimney Service Blog

Teach Fire Safety to Your Kids

Teaching kids fire safety

It’s fun to foster a love of your fireplace in your kids, making s’mores, sitting by the fire with a mug of cocoa, hanging Christmas stockings, talking about Santa’s arrival. But since kids are naturally curious, it’s important to put some time aside for the serious aspects of owning and using a fireplace or stove, too: fire safety. It can feel like a hard topic to broach, but preparing kids to safely interact with a heating appliance — and to understand how dangerous that appliance and the fire in it can be — can make all the difference in keeping them safe from injury or harm.

Develop an escape plan for your home and practice it.

Fireplace Safety Starts With You

There’s a lot you can do to make your fireplace and the area around it safer for kids, including having a safety screen installed. Making sure you never leave children alone with the fireplace — even if you’ve just put it out or turned it off — is key. It can take 45 minutes for gas fireplace doors to cool down (and they can get as hot as 200º F or hotter, very quickly), and smoldering embers can cause serious burns.

It’s helpful to bolster talking about boundaries — staying a safe distance away from the fireplace — with clear information about fire: how fast it can move, how dangerous it is, and how important it is to be careful around it.

Safety Around The Fireplace Is Just A Start

Teaching your kids how to be safe while enjoying the fires you build in the fireplace is just part of the equation. That natural curiosity leads a lot of children to light fires on their own, finding matches or lighters and playing with them in secret. Keeping those tools safely confined away from little hands is one step. Talking with kids about those tools, their safe use and the danger that comes along with fire is a key second step.

Creating An Action Plan, And Practicing

Keeping up with the regular maintenance of your fireplace and chimney, of course, reduces the chance of a chimney fire. But fire is always a danger, and one that we can’t predict, so being prepared is worthwhile for both adults and kids. The U.S. Fire Administration recommends practicing an escape plan with your kids, and it makes sense: Having a plan helps your whole family react quickly when you need to, and since kids often learn best by doing, practicing will be particularly valuable for them.

That learning process should including hearing what the fire alarm sounds like, and knowing what it means. You can also talk to kids about firemen: what they look like, what they do and why we shouldn’t be afraid of them. Knowing how to react if their clothes were to catch fire — the stop, drop and roll method — is important too, as is developing several escape routes and meeting places, and practicing all of it.

An escape plan is a serious thing, and fire safety is a serious topic, but practicing can be fun — and that definitely helps kids learn, and remember.

Does Your Chimney Need Repair?

Signs That Your Chimney Is In Need of Repair

One of the best features of many homes is a chimney and fireplace to enjoy a fire on a cold winter night. However, if the chimney is not in excellent working condition, it could actually be a source of peril rather than enjoyment. There are a few signs that any homeowner can look out for that would indicate a problem with their chimney. It is important to take these warning signs seriously because many of them can snowball into much more serious and dangerous situations.

One problem that can quickly lead to other problems is damage to the mortar joints. This is the place where the pieces of chimney masonry come together. It may be necessary to get up on the roof to see this damage, but it is well worth checking out. During your annual inspection, a certified sweep can take a look at your mortar joints for you, so that you don’t have to get up on the roof. If there is damage to the mortar joints, then too much moisture will be able to enter the chimney. Not only does moisture lead to many other problems with the chimney but, if it is not corrected, this could lead to a total collapse of the chimney.

Water in your chimney can cause many problems, including a collapse of your chimney.

Another issue that is best found from the chimney is a cracked or otherwise damaged chimney crown. The crown is the part of the chimney that keeps material out which should not be in the chimney. This helps prevent moisture in the chimney but also keeps things such as leaves and animals out. This may not seem important but allowing these foreign materials into the chimney can lead to much more serious issues.

If there is too much moisture in the chimney, one of the most obvious signs will be the development of rust. In particular, the damper and the firebox itself will have rust in the presence of excess moisture. When there is rust in the chimney, it can cause the flue to crack, which allows too much heat to enter the home when there is a fire in the fireplace. If this happens, the home is at an increased risk for a dangerous house fire.

Taking a good look at the firebox another good way to tell if there is too much moisture in the chimney. One obvious problem will be that the bricks on the chimney will begin to pop out, peel, or flake. Eventually, if it is not fixed, huge chunks of the firebox will start to break off. This could compromise the integrity of the entire structure, causing it to crumble completely.

If there are pieces of tile gathering at the bottom of the fireplace, it is important to consider where they are coming from. In most cases, they are coming from the flue liner, which is damaged. It is important to know that the fireplace should never be used if the flue liner is not intact. This is an extremely dangerous situation and should be remedied immediately. Many people in this situation choose to replace their tile liners with stainless steel, which is less likely to fall apart over time.

There are many different issues that may arise with a chimney and many of them can lead to other problems if they are not fixed in a timely manner. One of the most important things to look out for is excess water in the chimney. This can lead to deterioration that could eventually cause the entire structure to fall apart. If there is any sign that the structure of the chimney has been compromised, it is important to have it inspected immediately.