On a cold winter’s evening, there is nothing better than a fire to warm the home. Most home owners are concerned on how to start their fires in the first place, but not many focus on extinguishing the fire safely and correctly. Whether you are using a wood burning stove or a fireplace, it’s essential to know how to extinguish a fire when using kiln dried logs or wooden briquettes.

Extinguishing a fire in your fireplace

It is important you ensure you put your fire out safely. At Thomson Wood Fuel Ltd, we have put together some useful tips to help you put out your fire with confidence:

  • Stop fuelling the fire – while this sounds obvious, when you know it’s getting closer to the time where you head to bed, stop adding fuel to your fire. This makes it considerably easier when it comes to extinguishing it
  • Spread the logs – use a fire poker and carefully flatten out the logs and any embers, helping them to cool down quicker
  • Use the ash – with the little bit of ash that is produced from our kiln dried logs, you can start to cover the fire with cooling ash. You can repeat this process until the fire is out completely
  • Baking soda – add baking soda to your fire. Sodium bicarbonate has ingredients that is used in some fire extinguishers
  • Monitor – once you have extinguished your fire, monitor it for a good five minutes, ensuring it doesn’t reignite
  • Clean ash – once the fire is out and cool you can remove any ash from your fireplace, making it ready for your next fire.

Extinguishing a fire in your wood burning stove

While it is important to ensure your fire is out safely in your fireplace, the same applies if you are using a wood burning stove:

  • Close the doors – the doors to your wood burning stove should be securely closed
  • Close the vents – close the air vents to starve the fire of any oxygen, wait until the fire dies down and only the embers are glowing
  • Spread the logs – spread the logs and embers so that they are flat. Ensure the chimney damper is open
  • Spray – you can gently spray water or baking soda over the hot embers
  • Shut the door – shut the door again, allowing any ash and embers to cool effectively
  • Clean the ash – once everything has cooled, you can remove any ash that may remain, preparing your wood burning stove for your next fire.

Putting a Fire Out in an Emergency

While we do not like to imagine an emergency situation with your fire, you do need to know how to put out your fire in an emergency. Before you panic, it’s important to know you must never throw water on your fire. Throwing water on a hot fire not only causes a large amount of smoke, but you could also experience steam burns.

In the event you need to put the fire out in an emergency, the safest option is to use a fire blanket or extinguisher.

Conclusion

At Thomson Wood Fuel Ltd, we are passionate in providing our clients throughout the United Kingdom with high quality, Ready to Burn certified, kiln dried logs, kindling, and briquettes. While it is important to know how to start your fire, we believe it is just as important to know how to put out your fire safely and effectively. Do you want to discuss this in more detail? Feel free to give our experienced and friendly team a call today.