Something crazy

We heat our house with a pellet stove which is super efficient and great heat. Its a cute little stove that sits in our living room and has a pretty glass door so you can see the fire. It's way less maintenance and hassle than a regular wood stove. However I am not a fan of having fire in my house of any sort, so my husband is the one who deals with the stove filling it up with pellets and cleaning it a few times a week. Well sometime this month he has to go out of town for school for a whole week (defiantly not looking forward to that week) so he has been trying to get me to learn how to work the stove better and how to clean it. Last night I decided I would shut it down and clean it and he decided to work late no big deal right....

I got the stove cleaned with the help of Nathan who had to be right in the middle of everything and he also learned how to turn the shop vac on. I put it all back together and called my husband to make sure it was all ok and then turned it on. I was busy doing this and that as the kids were in bed by that time, well I walk back thru the living room and notice there was smoke building up in the fire box and not going anywhere. I quickly turn the stove back off and then the little pellets catch on fire. I get a little worried as I have never seen the stove do this and even though I am a fire fighter I got worried it may do something crazy. Make another call to my hubby who is like oh its ok don't worry about it. Hmm don't worry about it while its building with smoke that is now coming out of the vent and the door!!!! He said he would look at it when he got home, not a good enough answer for me.

I decide to send a text to Brenda to see if Don is busy and ask that he call me. I knew he didn't know anything about pellet stoves but he is the fire chief and could reassure me that it wouldn't blow up or do anything strange as long as I left the vent closed and the door closed. He assured me it would be ok it would just have to smolder and burn its self out. (oh and I didn't bother to tell my husband I made a phone call to reassure what he told me in the first place) Finally about an hour after I turned the stove off it quit smoking and our house cleared out then my wonderful hubby got home. He fully thought I had put something together wrong and broke the stove. To  my surprise it was all together right and when he re started it it worked. We did figure out that the blower sucker thing that sucks the smoke up the vent pipe hadn't came on.

Well I have decided that the week he is gone I will just use our propane furnace and not have this issue. I was nervous about to throw my dinner of one choc chip cookie up. I don't think I would have been as worried if I hadn't had two kids at home asleep or maybe I would have been who knows. Hubby laughed at me because I was worried about it but yet I am a fire fighter. Well I can tell you that when its something not going right in your own home you get a bit worried!.

Needless to say I didn't sleep well last night as I kept checking to be sure the stove was working, I will be very glad when our new house is done since we are putting in a ground source heat pump there will be no flames to contend with and no worries for me!.

Here is a picture of the stove, its from Christmas last year. Great source of heat but its still fire!