Aluminium is Not Safe to Use With Fires

I'm not sure if you know this but an interesting fact that the woman at the structure fire learnt this evening. 

Aluminium is not something you want to put your ash in when cleaning out the wood stove, fireplace, etc. It actually traps the heat in from any sparks still live in the center of the pile and will radiate heat out 10x the actual temperature of the ash. If placed on a wood or duro-deck, it will heat up enough to start a fire. 

2 Things should be done when putting your ash outside: 

First Make sure its cold. Don't clean out the ash while its still warm. If you have to, then make sure that you put it into an ash bucket. Most hardware stores, fireplace shops have them and they really aren't expensive. When you take it outside, spread the ash on the ground away from the house and run water over it. Soak it good:)

Second thing to remember is never leave the hot ash bucket on your deck! If you are just going to be a minute, that's all it takes for a spark to fly or depending on the temperature of the ash, to radiate through to the dry surface.

The woman who had her deck catch on fire, didn't know that the heat through the aluminium would actually catch her wood pile on fire, below the deck slats. It melted her duro-deck, vinyl siding and shattered the first layer of her patio door glass. It happened in a 5 min time span. She thought it was safe on her deck while she lit her fire before taking it out to the compost. 

Peter was great! He explained to her about warm ash and what would have happened if she had of put it in the composter as well as how it had caught her deck on fire.

So this winter, please watch out for that ash... you never know for sure. Like a cigarette butt that you think is out, only 1 tiny spark is needed to burn a forest down or in the case of a house fire, warm ash.