Disaster - House Fire

[random calliope]

Forgive me for waxing nostalgic, but every time I sleep in one of the houses in TLD that has a stove, and I go to bed with the fire still burning, I'm taken back to an old farmhouse I lived in in Montana when I was a kid.  TLD houses have the fancy indoor bathrooms though, which is different.  We had a two seater outhouse and a sauna for bathing.  But I digress.  Our stoves were wood stoves with the cast iron plates that you set on the hole in top before putting the pan on.  We used potbelly stoves for heat, and the bigger stoves for cooking.  There was also a potbelly stove in the bunkhouse where my brother and I slept.  

One night when I was eight years old it was awfully cold and we weren't sure if it was too cold to snow, or if we'd get a light dusting.  My brother put a couple of logs in the stove and we each jumped into our respective army cots to sleep for the night.  I remember waking up and I could see the stove glowing red up to the very defined line that was the damper.  I was eight, so it seemed pretty interesting to me to wake up and see that stove in the otherwise pitch black room.  We made it fine until morning when we thought the fire was out.  But even if the fire is out in the stove that doesn't mean it's out in the chimney.  The roof caught on fire.  We only got a light dusting of snow, but we threw whatever snow we could at it.  The bunkhouse went up in flames and those flames leaped to the house and with only a pump for water there wasn't much we could do.  We all got out safe with just the clothes on our back. (I'd like to belatedly thank the Hooterites for the new clothes).

TLD should have a similar scenario because every time you light that stove you are rolling the dice.

According to MasterSweep "The primary cause of creosote build up is a cool flue temperature. Metal, prefabricated zero clearance fireplace chimney's are the worst offenders. Their light sheet metal construction actually causes the interior flue temperature to be abnormally cool. Because of this, creosote condenses inside a prefabricated chimney at an accelerated rate."

Look at the screenshot of the stove at the farmhouse in Pleasant Valley.  We have a metal, prefabricated zero clearance fireplace chimney made of light sheet metal!  But there's more.  What else causes creosote fires?

"Unseasoned firewood. Wet wood is bad wood. Because it is wet, it creates much less heat, and actually fails to burn up a lot of the available fuel in the wood. Because so much energy is used initially just to drive off the water trapped in the cells of the logs, burning green wood causes the whole fire, and the flue to stay cool. The "smoke" of unseasoned wood is heavily laden with unburned creosote."

This is just an accident waiting to happen.  But there's more and it's very, very good news!

According to the Chimney Safety Institute of America 

A chimney fire in action can be impressive. Indications of a chimney fire have been described as creating:

• loud cracking and popping noise
• a lot of dense smoke, and
• an intense, hot smell

Chimney fires can burn explosively – noisy and dramatic enough to be detected by neighbors or people passing by. Flames or dense smoke may shoot from the top of the chimney. Homeowners report being startled by a low rumbling sound that reminds them of a freight train or a low flying airplane.

Boy howdy!  We have ourselves some drama fit for a video game right there!

We should have house fires.  Oh, and you should lose everything except what you're carrying on your person moment you run out the door and watch the house burn down.

[wilkinscw]

That's got to be tough to go through at that age. I'm glad you all got out alive and well.

I myself have had several wood stoves, and have gone to bed with them still burning with no incidents. Still, it IS quite possible. I would welcome this as a really interesting game mechanic. Of course, I only use fires to cook and melt snow with, unless I'm caught outside in a blizzard and can't get to shelter fast enough.

Great idea!

[Pillock]

That would certainly be dramatic as a gameplay element.

However, there currently isn't much need to burn a stove at night in most locations; if you needed to keep a fire going while you sleep, perhaps the burn-time of fuel would need to be extended as well, or else you'd spend your entire day every day looking for firewood and wearing out your hatchets (this is why I have never got very far on Timberwolf Mountain).

I think there would also need to be some way of mitigating the risk of chimney fires, or in a long game you might find that you'd burned down all the habitable buildings! (Or, it could just be a very rare occurrence.)

I hope your family recovered swiftly from that experience, by the way. It must have been pretty traumatic.

[Fuarian]

When they add Auroras and flaming electronics.