Wood stoves are in demand – and their prices have risen. If you now want to save and install a stove yourself or put an old chimney back into operation without testing, you are risking your life.
An incorrectly installed wood stove can mean death. Errors can lead to fires or carbon monoxide emissions in the living area. Chimney sweeps, fire brigades and stove builders warn of this.
The danger isn’t just theoretical: stoves are selling fantastically right now. However, craftsmen who connect these ovens are in short supply in many places. Some homeowners connect the devices themselves. Or they reactivate closed wood heating systems and stoves.
There are many potentially fatal consequences of unchecked installation on your own: if the fireplace is not correctly connected to the chimney, or if its cross-section or length is too small, the dangerous exhaust gases may not escape. You will then enter the living room.
For example, the respiratory poison carbon monoxide, which you can neither see, smell nor taste. It accumulates in the blood and prevents the body from absorbing oxygen. This can lead to suffocation.
For example, stoves can be a fire hazard if the floor and wall covering around them is flammable. If furniture is too close, this can also happen. In the past, the fire investigators from the Institute for Damage Prevention and Damage Research (IFS) found sofas near the stove.
Therefore, a fireplace may only be operated if the district chimney sweep has approved the system after installation. Information on this can be found in the respective state building regulations.
Incidentally, such an inspection by the professional is repeated regularly: twice within seven years, the district chimney sweep has to inspect stoves at the so-called fireplace inspection.
Even a chimney that has not been used for a long time can become a deadly hazard if you connect a new stove to it yourself. For example, birds may have built their nests in or on it. Then the flue gases from the stove, which also contain the deadly carbon monoxide, no longer completely escape through the chimney and get into the living room.
The HKI industrial association for house, heating and kitchen technology therefore advises having chimneys that have not been used for a long time checked by a chimney sweep or heating installer.
