The queen of the house is the stove. Rules for heating in the country

The New Year holidays are coming up very soon. And how can one sit at home when outside the city, like in a fairy tale, there are trees silvered with snow. How tempting it is to come to a heated house, sit and warm up after a crackling frost by a hot fireplace. But still, some safety rules should not be forgotten on any day. And especially on holidays, when attention is scattered. And so that there are no problems besides joy during the holidays, today we recall these rules.

I don’t know about you, but when I come to the dacha in winter and enter a cold house, I usually remember the words from the fairy tale “Frost”: are you warm, girl, are you warm, red? Well, here, to make it warm, the fuss in the house begins.

Of course, we immediately fire up the stove and heat it for five hours – so much is needed to warm up the air in the house to 18 degrees. Usually the stove is heated twice – in the morning and in the evening.

In long-burning furnaces, the process can be brought to a state of slow smoldering. If you heat a stove that is not equipped with such a system, then one bookmark of firewood is enough for 1.5 – 2.5 hours.

Experienced summer residents plan in advance to visit the dacha in winter, and for this purpose they prepare the best firewood, with dense dry wood, from which there will be good heat and the stove will heat up quickly. And for kindling, birch bark, paper and small twigs will go.

Everyone has different stoves, but everyone who is going to the country in winter should know the following fire safety rules:

– in garden houses it is allowed to operate stoves only on solid fuels, the walls of the heating pipes must be made of brick and have a thickness of at least 120 mm (brick flat);

– to protect the floor, walls and partitions from fire, protection must be made: on a wooden floor in front of the door, a metal sheet with a size of at least 0.7×0.5 m must be placed with the long side along the furnace, and not carpet, linoleum or other flammable materials, open the fire of the fireplace must be protected by a screen;

– it is imperative to insulate a wooden wall or partition adjacent at an angle to the front of the furnace using a metal mesh covered with a layer of plaster 0.5 cm thick or a metal sheet of roofing steel. Insulation height – from the floor to a level of 25 cm above the furnace door;

– under the frame of the furnace and stoves on metal legs, a sheet of roofing steel should be nailed to the wooden floor on asbestos cardboard with a thickness of at least 10 mm, and the height of the metal legs should be at least 100 mm;

– it is dangerous to put beds and other furniture next to the furnace furnace opening. The distance to the stove must be at least 1.5 m.

Remember that in no case should you:

– use gasoline, kerosene and other flammable liquids to kindle stoves;

– to heat stoves that are not adapted for this with coal;

– install stoves in attic rooms;

– to heat stoves with open doors, using too long firewood;

– use ceramic, asbestos-cement and metal pipes for chimneys, with the exception of double, non-heating ones.

And of course, before the firebox, check if there are any cracks in your stove or fireplace, faulty doors, and if the chimney is not heavily clogged. Cracks must be sealed with a special solution, the chimney must be cleaned, and do not forget to open the damper at the pipe.

Check the draft, for this they usually bring a lit match or candle to the blower. The flame should stably and strongly draw into the open blower. The smoke in the rooms is due to poor draft. When kindling, you need to completely open the blower of the furnace, create the so-called hot “cloud”, which, rising, will warm up all the channels of the chimney. And only after the fire flares up, you can cover the blower.

And the main condition for kindling without smoke is not to try to bring the stove to the maximum operating mode immediately, that is, everything is done gradually, this also applies to the time of the first firebox and the amount of firewood.

Even in the summer months with an unheated stove, there are difficulties. So, my neighbor once came to the dacha in June and began to melt the stove, which did not want to flare up. Clouds of smoke went into the room, he could not understand what was happening. After some trials, I realized that there was no traction, but it turned out that inside the pipe, at the very end, some bird had made a nest for itself. There have been cases when mice create their nests inside the stove, and thus clog the smoke passage. And when we just laid the stove – we have it complicated, Swedish, with 12 knees – our cat crawled through all the knees from beginning to end, thereby helping us check if the chimney was accidentally laid, and only then installed the pipe. So before you heat the stove, check if there are “our smaller brothers” in it who want to warm up.

Well, before going to bed, do not close the dampers tightly if the firewood has not yet burned out completely. My grandmother had a cut the size of a nickel on the damper. With such a small trick, one could not think that in a dream you would inhale carbon monoxide.

And of course, one cannot fail to mention another New Year’s fun for those who go to the country for the holidays – about the bath.

Unfortunately, many people are rather frivolous about this wonderful form of recreation. But often not only rest, but also people’s lives depend on simple precautions.

So, what safety rules in the bath are important to follow:

– the ventilation gap between the floor and the steam room door should always be free;

– do not dry clothes, towels on heated stoves;

– be sure to have a fire extinguisher;

– check the health of the electrical wiring, it is she who is the root cause of fires in the baths;

– clean chimneys;

– the firebox should not be left unattended;

– do not exceed the temperature above 110 degrees to avoid overheating and smoldering building materials.

So do not disregard the fire, and good holidays will be provided to you.

Alina Fedorova.

Author’s photo