Wood burner mayhem

It’s four o’clock and I am finally home from work! I walk into the house and what a surprise! Smoke came billowing out of the door. I’m not kidding. It was like a freaking Cheech and Chong movie. My first words “Damn Dirk”. Here he comes wondering out of the back office (where he has been playing video games) and says “is it smoky in here?”. Well yea, it’s smoky. It was so heavy, I could taste the yucky chemical taste.

I begin to panic and run around opening all the windows and doors. I swear he just stands there. So, I start shouting “What the hell, I mean seriously WHAT THE HELL!”.

Well, he had decided after more than a year to try out our wood burner for the first time ever. I guess it didn’t work.

He had the phone book out and open to a certain page and says call that guy. It turns out that guy is the guy we bought the house from. He realized at some point he needed help, but didn’t actually call for any. The smoke was actually coming out of our heat vents.

He says he has no idea what is wrong it other than the smoke keeps coming and the blower on the back won’t start.

I have been home about two minutes by this point and am calling “that guy”. Turns out he is in a meeting and will call us back. I call my friend Sheri (because she has a wood burner and right now is the closest thing to an expert that we have). Sheri tries hard, but isn’t sure what to do because 1. she can’t see our problem and 2. she has a different kind of wood burner. I feel like a big jackass for calling her : ) She does say that sometimes you have to open the ash tray to let the fire get hot enough to get the blower to work.

That seems to work. As far as getting the blower to kick on.

By this point, I have only been home about 20 minutes and am still wearing my coat and shoes from just walking in. The house is now like an ice box because all the windows and doors are open.

I begin to get really pissy all over again. I just kept shouting what they hell were you doing and why didn’t you fix this!! As I am walking around closing everything back up, I notice Dirk is still playing his video game in the computer room. I really wanted to rip the computer out the wall and throw it at him. He didn’t seem to think any of this was a big deal. Later he says that he tried for THREE HOURS to fix it and was tired of trying and fresh out of ideas.

It all worked out in the end. I talked to “that guy” on the phone for about 15 minutes while he explained all the tricks of making this thing work correctly. We still aren’t exactly sure how to use it, but the house is nice and warm again and, thankfully, smoke free.

I found out later that Dirk actually started the fire at like 1:00 so it had been burning about four hours and had not gotten hot enough (for a number of things he didn’t realize he was supposed to do) and the house was so full because he just let it run for about 20 minutes with the smoke pouring out.

Maybe this wood burner thing isn’t such a good idea!