Fireplace door explosion

[jaywbigred]

Well, maybe explosion is the wrong word, more like spontaneous combustion.

Saturday night we were all sitting in the living room. We had a nice fire going, but the wood we were working with (supplied by condo) was somewhat wet from snow. So we got it burning decently hot (it seemed), and kept the doors most of the way closed, which seemed to keep it burning hot and allowed us to use the wet wood.

My buddy finished reading Time magazine, and tossed it on the ground, about 5 feet from fireplace. Dunno if it was by chance or not, but at that exact moment, one panel of the 4 panel door exploded, spraying hot glass on the hearth and rug in front of the fireplace, and making a loud noise. I jumped up and used the fireplace shovel to wrist shot the hot glass off the permanent carpet and onto the replaceable fireplace carpet or the marble hearth. No permanent damage was done, but we were all shocked.

Has anyone heard of anything like this? Is one not supposed to keep glass fireplace doors closed? It was only by sheer luck that no one was laying in front of the fire or fooling with the wood supply or doing something else in front of the door when it happened.

Here is a pic:

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

[ALLSKIING]

They usually say not to close the doors while the fire was burning... would guess the cold air from the mag being tossed near the real hot glass was enough to break it.

 

[RootDKJ]

I keep my doors open when I have a hot one going.

 

[ctenidae]

I keep my doors open when I have a hot one going.

Probably good advice on a bunch of levels.

 

[RootDKJ]

Probably good advice on a bunch of levels.

so true...

 

[jaywbigred]

They usually say not to close the doors while the fire was burning... would guess the cold air from the mag being tossed near the real hot glass was enough to break it.

I'm seeing that now, as I search around. Grew up with fireplaces that didn't have doors, and never heard or had anyone tell me that they were supposed to kept open at all times while burning. How is someone supposed to learn that?

I guess I just found out, actually...the hard way.

 

[Glenn]

We did that to our surround in CT after we bought our house. I grew up with a woodstove...and the door on that was pretty much always shut. So, I burned the fireplace the same way. I had a nice fire going with some ash....POP! One of the pannels blew out. When I went to throw out the old surround, I could not, for the life of me, break the other three glass pannels. I beleive that stuff tempered glass.

I want to say a small air leak near one of the handles causes ours to pop. I guess we'll never know though. We bought a new surround at the Depot. I think they're about $100 or so. Pretty easy to install. A bit messy, but straight forward.

 

[dmc]

wow.... glad nobody got hurt...

Lesson learned...

 

[billski]

we put doors on ours just to mitigate the warm air loss in the house. We always burn open, but close the chain "drapes" when we get particularly sappy wood that pops a lot.

 

[ski_resort_observer]

It's possible the fire got too hot....I always had one of those little metal temp gauges with magnet that goes on the stovepipe just above the stove. It's got a red zone that depending on the stove is usually 800/1200F +. I don't see many stoves theses days that have them and personally I don't know how you can safely use a woodstove without one.

I have seen people burning fires so hot that the stovepipe is literally redhot. The ironic thing is that burning a hot fire is a good thing as it keep the creosol from building up in the upper part of the stovepipe but burning it too hot can definately compromise the glass doors on a woodstove. Not sure if that's what happened to you but it does happen.