old boilers lead to fire brigades!



(picture above- the mess we made)

Wow I've only been in this new house for 2 weeks (not even permanently living here yet) and already i have saved the place from burning down.
The whole house is absolutely freezing if we don't use this old boiler to heat up the whole house, it turns on and off automatically and bearing in mind the house hasn't been lived in for a while the boiler probably hasn't been serviced for a very long time either- but hey we didn't think of this and we thought this nackered old thing would be perfectly fine to use- for now anyway.
My stepdad was urging to go out and get dinner because it was about 7pm and mum was away and we had no food, I had een protesting that i would drive but as he was nagging me i popped onto the computer to check my mail- as ya do..
After 3 minutes of continuous nagging i got my coat headed for the front door but of course.. being female my main priority was make-up and my phone! So heading towards the door i made a quick dash to left and ran upstairs, i smelt a strange smell which i took no notice of, i slapped on some make-up, i then when back through the hallway to my bedroom- again smelling something, realising it must have been smoke.. "oh someone's having a bomfire".. but as i dashed past the room it was coming from I got a glimpse of the shut windows.. I carried on going to my room thinking about what I had just witnessed, i grabbed my phone and came back. Thinking how strange this was i pushed the door open, and as i thought, both windows were shut and the room was completely filled with smoke, and i began to think i had left my hair straghtener on in there or something. I scanned the room to try to see where the smoke was coming from, and loads of it was shooting out from behind the bed near the plug socket that the lamp was plugged into..
"err.. WILLIAMMM... THERE'S LOTS OF SMOKE IN THIS ROOOM!..".. *thump thump thump* up he comes up the stairs, moves the bed out the way, and loads of smoke was fuuuming out of this socket. A moment of panic, and then action. It's a long story to go through the whole thing as detailed as i have been, but basically at first we thought it was an electric fire, so turned the electrics off etc and then ripped the socket out the wall (this is from the picture above), but the smoke was coming from somewhere inside the wall, so ripped the skirting board off and the bottom of the plaster on this wall and pulling bits of brick out we saw the fume from the boiler- which had now been switched off. This nackered old boiler had been getting very very hot and there was a whole in the fume to it, which we quite clearly saw. We turned the boiler off and eventually the smoke stopped coming into the room, but we went outside and looked at the chimney and it was obvious something was smoldering away as there was still smoke coming out- and this was an hour and a half after it had been turned off!
Well, we put 2 and 2 together and decided there was nothing we could do about it and we didn't know what as happening, so we called 999 and told them we thought we had a chimney fire, after about 5-10minutes a big fire engine with 5 firemen (well actually 3 firemen and 2 firewomen!) came out, and they couldn't either figure out what was going on, so they called out another engine to get a thermal cam out and more heads to think about the situation! The second engine with another 5 firemen again.. i felt like i was in someone's dream, 8 firemen were running around my house- blimey! hehe..
But yeah anyway in the end they decided to shove a carbon dioxide fire extingusher down the chimney.. no water because it could have been an oil fire or something which would have made it worse, and carbon dioxide puts out anything apparently, and they were right, whatever was smoldering away seemed to go, and all was fine and dandy now.
Afterwards i was kicking myself that i never got a picture of the fire engines- i was only left with the remains of the mess we had made- but oh well it's better then no picture at all, but i was too occupied with the whole situation to think of getting a picture of them at work at the time- and plus i would have looked kinda geeky..
Just think if i hadn't have put make-up and my mobile phone as my highest priority instead of listening to my stepdad then in that room it could have gotten a lot hotter in the time we were out and the skirting board could have caught fire, and maybe then leading to the bed which was beside it..
We ended up having dinner at 11.30pm, and we didn't leave the house to buy anything in the end, we just scavenged the remains of the fridge to make a pasta dish.

So there are 2 lessons i have learnt here, and i hope you have too!..
1. Don't trust old boilers they could lead to fire brigades
2. Always -and i mean ALWAYS.. never listen to anyone else when they are in danger of overlooking your priorities.


| | Posted: Sat - May 27, 2006 at 02:14 PM          

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