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boat fire


dccruiser

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13 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

I'm going to read that opening word as "dragged"... unless otherwise advised! ;)

 

And did Goldie survive?

 

 

Local terminology was 'where were you drug up ?'

 

Alas poor goldie, an ice cube does not, a good bed make.

(But when you have livestock, you soon get used to having deadstock so it was not a 'big issue')

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3 hours ago, tree monkey said:

It helps a fire to draw, so if your lighting the fire leaving the door open a touch can help the fuel to catch.

It used to be a regular thing in the days of open fires to hold a piece of paper in front of the fire for a similar effect.

As has been said a dodgy thing to do but it does have a point

I was OK until it caught and shot up the chimney or todays paper and you scorched it. Did it as a kid lighting the fire many times

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2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

I was OK until it caught and shot up the chimney or todays paper and you scorched it. Did it as a kid lighting the fire many times

Basically, you were making an open fire into a stove with a paper door - twas alway likely to end badly! :D

 

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We used to stand a shovel on the grate front then put the newspaper up. It's used to be able to stand the heat longer. Dad made a Ali square shield with a handle for such occurances. We had a pub at the time with three, perhaps four fires to be lit. 

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6 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

Basically, you were making an open fire into a stove with a paper door - twas alway likely to end badly! :D

 

never ended up badly, Dad and then me always got the fire going by this method if it wasnt windy , chimbly top probably 40 foot above the fire. 

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4 minutes ago, matty40s said:

never ended up badly, Dad and then me always got the fire going by this method if it wasnt windy , chimbly top probably 40 foot above the fire. 

No, I never had a problem either in truth, and don't suppose many others did either as the draw would take any accidents up the chimney.  Elf 'n Safety would be having none of it nowadays though, I suspect.

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10 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

No, I never had a problem either in truth, and don't suppose many others did either as the draw would take any accidents up the chimney.  Elf 'n Safety would be having none of it nowadays though, I suspect.

I share these memories of lighting coal fires with the aid of sheets of paper over the front. Where it can go wrong is when the paper catches and is drawn up a chimney that needs sweeping...

 

You used to be able to buy a pack of something that you put on the fire to extinguish a chimney blaze, don’t know what was in it.

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1 hour ago, BruceinSanity said:

You used to be able to buy a pack of something that you put on the fire to extinguish a chimney blaze, don’t know what was in it.

I don't know either, but I'll bet it was carcinogenic and environmentally disastrous!  Everything was, wasn't it?  It's easy to forget that chimney fires were quite a common thing: sometimes disastrously so.

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1 hour ago, BruceinSanity said:

I share these memories of lighting coal fires with the aid of sheets of paper over the front. Where it can go wrong is when the paper catches and is drawn up a chimney that needs sweeping...

 

You used to be able to buy a pack of something that you put on the fire to extinguish a chimney blaze, don’t know what was in it.

My grandfather put a metal door at the top of the flue, in the loftspace.  The trick was to throw the correct quantity of water through the door.  If you got it just right, the water largely turned to steam and extinguished the chimney fire.  Too much, and it made a terrible mess on the floor. The opening for the door was pre-made following an incident with a stuck chimney brush.

 

He would also move a fire from one room to another by taking a shovelful of blazing coal,

 

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Tacet said:

 

 

He would also move a fire from one room to another by taking a shovelful of blazing coal,

 

 

 

 

Needs a steady hand!

It sounds startling now, but in the 19th century warming pans in beds, and foot-warmers in railway carriages, were filled with burning coal.

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2 minutes ago, Chewbacka said:

We must have been posh as there was a gas bayonet outlet by both fireplaces for the gas poker.  Don’t suppose you can get those anymore.

 

Maybe more to do with where your were

My Grandparents (in the city) had the gas poker, we were in the country and I don't think gas was available within 10 miles of us, so no gas poker.

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10 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Maybe more to do with where your were

My Grandparents (in the city) had the gas poker, we were in the country and I don't think gas was available within 10 miles of us, so no gas poker.

When I was a boy in Sheffield in the 1960s, friends of ours had a gas poker. It was a neat piece of kit, as they didn't say back then. We had no gas (and still haven't where we live now) so we couldn't have one. I wonder if they are still made or, indeed, still legal to use.

 

EDIT: a quick flick around the internet shows that they are indeed still available. That's quite made my day. Little things, etc....

Edited by Athy
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5 minutes ago, Athy said:

I wonder if they are still made or, indeed, still legal to use.

Yes

Presumably

 

https://www.bes.co.uk/gas-poker-for-natural-gas-only?ref=gs&photo=true&gclid=CjwKCAjworfdBRA7EiwAKX9HePrLP8rQhOadQGui6INhL4VOJDDWhBBav1RE7TDAYzFMmuim44C7rBoCI5kQAvD_BwE

 

717OMWYDKpL._SL1024_.jpg

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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On 27/09/2018 at 14:57, Sea Dog said:

You're right. I should have said "we were" as I've been there too. It's to do with being folk of a certain age I think! :)

 

Was never allowed to read the 'News of the World' as a kid, though the paper was kept to light the fire. The only time I could read the paper when it was up at the chimney 'drawing the fire'. It was a race to read the 'naughty bits' before the scorching became too intense, and the paper caught alight.

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7 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

I don't know either, but I'll bet it was carcinogenic and environmentally disastrous!  Everything was, wasn't it?  It's easy to forget that chimney fires were quite a common thing: sometimes disastrously so.

We had a chimney fire in our present house - built around 12 years ago. It has no open fires and a single gas fire in addition to the gas boiler for everything else. We called the local fire brigade (retained so we knew most of them anyway).

 

The explanation: this was in reality a flue that looks like a chimney outside (to please the planners and salespeople no doubt). The flue was open to the sky - when the houses across the street were built a short time after ours, regulations changed and they were fitted with a protective wire mesh. Jackdaws had nested in our flue, probably more than once, and allowed dry twigs to collect and on one of the occasions when we lit the gas fire, the whole lot ignited. Fortunately there was no lasting damage and it all but extinguished itself almost before the firepeople could do anything!

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