Learn and follow woodstove safety tips to prevent fires in your home. Make sure your stove is safely installed, and have it checked annually by a professional. Always supervise children and pets by the stove, and consider putting up a gate to create a physical barrier.
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When heating a home with a wood, it is important to know some basic woodstove safety tips. Woodstoves are essentially a fire in the middle of the house, so taking time and attention to educate the whole family about safety is important. Read about general woodstove safety tips, and also how to keep children and pets safe around the stove
General Woodstove Safety Tips
Safe Installation
Before installing a new woodstove, there are a few safety checks to go through. Here is a list of Dos and Don’ts to make sure your stove is safely installed
- DO make sure there is enough clearance between the stove and stovepipe and all combustible materials including walls and ceilings. Clearances for your stove can be found in the owner’s manual
- DO place the stove on a non-combustible fire-resistant base. These can be purchased or made yourself.
- DO have your chimney inspected before installation. This can be done by a mason or other competent individual
- DO hire a qualified professional to install the stove, chimney, and connectors.
- DO install a smoke and carbon monoxide detector in the same room as the woodstove
- DO keep a Class A fire extinguisher within handy reach of the wood stove
- DON’T extend the stovepipe through a wall or ceiling without adding a collar
- DON’T connect the woodstove to a chimney that is connected to another fuel-burning appliance.
- DON’T connect the woodstove to a fireplace chimney unless the fireplace is sealed off.
Safe Operation and Maintenance
After safely installing a woodstove, the next step is safe operation and maintenance. You should perform regular maintenance daily.
Burning wood, whether in a campfire or wooden stove, always leaves behind ashes. the first point of maintenance is safely removing these from the stove. Remove ashes with an ash shovel to a metal container with a tight-fitting lid. For another level of safety, lightly wet the ashes with water to ensure that they are completely out. Wet ashes are useful for cleaning the glass door of your woodstove, or for polishing silver. Dump the ash bucket when it is 3/4 full. If desired, use the ashes in your garden to neutralize acidic soil. Otherwise, dump the ash bucket away from plants you want to keep.
After removing the ashes, use a wire brush to clean your woodstove. This helps prevent creosote and soot buildup. If left unchecked, this buildup creates a fire hazard.
Schedule yearly woodstove maintenance with a professional. This includes chimney inspection and cleaning. Unless you are extremely knowledgeable about chimney cleaning, it is best to hire a professional. It is easy to create gaps in the chimney, and these can easily lead to a house fire. It is better to spend money on a professional annually than to damage your stove or chimney – something that could cost thousands of dollars to repair.
Safely Building a Fire
The first woodstove safety tip for building a fire is don’t be in a hurry. Starting a fire in a woodstove takes patience. Lighter fluid is a quick way to start a charcoal grill or bonfire, but is extremely risky to use in a woodstove and may damage the appliance. Using an accelerant such as lighter fluid gives the fire a clear trail out of the stove. The fumes from lighter fluid can also ignite in the stove and cause an explosion. To safely start a fire, only use paper and kindling to ignite the logs. You can read more about starting a fire in a woodstove here.
The second woodstove safety tip for building a fire is to burn the right material. Never burn garbage, plastic, and construction materials in a woodstove. They can produce toxic fumes and release heavy metals into the air that are dangerous to anyone in the home. Only burn paper, uncoated cardboard, and dry, seasoned wood in your woodstove.
Hardwoods such as maple, birch, hickory, beech, ash, or oak are the best wood to use in a woodstove. Never use softwoods such as pine. Cut, split, stack, and dry firewood for at least a year before burning it in the stove. Properly seasoned hardwood will show cracks in the end and contain no more than 20% moisture.
In Case of a Fire
If a chimney fire breaks out, the first thing you should do is call the fire department.
After calling the fire department, you can help control the fire by closing the stove’s dampers. Always keep a fire extinguisher close to the woodstove and use it if anything outside the chimney and stove ignites.
Woodstove Safety Tips For Families
Woodstoves pose a danger to children of all ages. While there is no way to 100% child-proof a woodstove, there are safety measures that will make it less risky. Childproofing does not matter if you are not watching your children and enforcing safety rules. After a certain age, if children want to get past the gate to the woodstove, they absolutely will.
Woodstove Safety Tips for Babies and Toddlers
To keep babies and small toddlers safe around a woodstove, a solid barrier is necessary. Babies and toddlers cannot reliably be taught fire rules, so they must be physically barred from anything that can injure them. We have this gate around our stove. It attaches to the wall, but can also be set up as a freestanding barrier. For babies and young toddlers who have little language skills, it presents a physical barrier, keeping them away from the stove, in case they escape from eyesight. This gate is a failsafe and should never be relied on by itself to keep young children safe from burns.
Woodstove Safety Tips for Children
We have two main safety rules for our older children and vigorously enforce them:
- Keep your whole body behind the gate. This means no reaching in or over the gate for any reason ever.
- No running near the woodstove. Running leads to tripping. We don’t want anyone tripping into the gate and testing it out.
In addition to these rules, we talk regularly about what a burn is, how much they hurt, and how to prevent them. All of my big kids have gotten a small burn or two from being too curious in our kitchen. They are well aware of how painful burns are and keep clear of the hot woodstove.
To get big kids safely involved with the woodstove, consider giving them jobs preparing material for burning. My kids love ripping cardboard into pieces, twisting sheets of paper together, and carrying logs in from the woodshed. Doing these jobs allows them to feel ownership of heating our home without getting anywhere near the hot stove.
Woodstove Safety Tips for Pets
Pets often love the warmth of a woodstove. While it is fine for them to warm up by the fire, owners should consider taking the following precautions to make sure their pets are safe.
- Train your pet to stay away. Just like young children, pets may not realize a woodstove is dangerous to them. Curiosity may lead them to get closer than is safe, resulting in burns or singed fur. Train pets to stay back from the fire, or install a gate to keep them at a safe distance
- Never leave pets alone around a woodstove. If you need to leave the room, take your pet with you. Place pet gates in the doorways leading to the woodstove.
- Keep the hearth area clear. Never leave anything flammable on the hearth. Don’t allow your pet to drag a blanket or toys onto the hearth. A snapping ember could potentially catch the items on fire, burning your pet, you, or your house.
- Avoid roughhousing near the woodstove. Rough playing near the woodstove can be as dangerous as a fire. Your pet may stumble into the stove or hearth area and get burned, or knock the door open and cause a housefire.
- Watch your decorations. Never hand decorations around your woodstove. Pets, especially cats, are drawn to decorations and love to pull them down. Avoid this temptation by only decorating away from the woodstove.
Final Thoughts
Following these woodstove safety tips will help keep you, your family, and your pets safe while heating your home naturally. Make sure to thoroughly read your owner’s manual before starting your stove for the first time, and enjoy your cozy home.
For more information about woodstoves, check out these articles:
Thanks for coming along on the journey,
Molly
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