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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know? What's from House stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerome the Jairs.
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know. Jerry got a
Speaker 1: piece of mail the other day that said Jerome, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like real mail though, right, Jerry, Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: how that happened. Oh like mail mail, not like a mail.
Speaker 1: Oh little Jerry just said confirmed. Weird. We've been doing
Speaker 1: a lot of this Jerry translating lately. That's really weird.
Speaker 1: That's bizarre. I mean, I sold your address to a
Speaker 1: mailing list, but I've never been reimbursed for it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: how how are you, sir? Great we are fresh off
Speaker 1: our live shows and Boston, Mass MA and uh Washington,
Speaker 1: d C and uh Big. Thanks to everyone that came out.
Speaker 1: Those were a lot of fun, Yeah for sure. And
Speaker 1: thanks to the Brightest Young Things for having us to
Speaker 1: the Benson Ball with Tigna Taro And it was wonderful
Speaker 1: we got to meet Ticks. She was just as nice
Speaker 1: and nonplussed as I would have voted exactly. She didn't
Speaker 1: make a fuss No, nor should she. Wait, I mean
Speaker 1: that in a good way. Wait, is it non plus
Speaker 1: the opposite of what you think it means? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think non plus means like you're you're agitated, means
Speaker 1: you're plused. Yeah, I'd learned things all the time on
Speaker 1: this show. Yeah, me to your favorite part of my job.
Speaker 1: And uh, most specifically, the most recent thing I've learned, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that fire, the use of fire, the technological application
Speaker 1: of fire, that's as far as I'm going actually predates humanity.
Speaker 1: That it was Homo erectus who was the first um
Speaker 1: upright hominid who controlled fire, and it was as long
Speaker 1: ago as a million years. There's evidence of the use
Speaker 1: the controlled use of fire by humans as as much
Speaker 1: as a million years ago. Yeah, it's just here, uh
Speaker 1: in this article that you found that uh in China
Speaker 1: their hearts of clay, silt and limestone from like a
Speaker 1: half a million years ago. And uh, you know signs
Speaker 1: like you said in Africa over a million years ago
Speaker 1: that people and these are in caves, so essentially indoor fireplace. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and if you are an anthropologist, you are familiar
Speaker 1: with the term hearth, but that's usually used to, um,
Speaker 1: describe something that doesn't really resemble the hearth that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about today. Usually it was like just a shallow depression.
Speaker 1: Maybe it did have some limestone or some clay or
Speaker 1: something else to keep it from catching fire, but nothing
Speaker 1: like the fireplaces we know of today. The ones we
Speaker 1: see and say there's a fireplace, they're actually about seven
Speaker 1: hundred years old. Yeah, and I think, um, the history
Speaker 1: of the chimney isn't super clear, but by the fourteenth century,
Speaker 1: and of course Europe, when you had a little dough,
Speaker 1: you could then afford the nice chimney or maybe just
Speaker 1: any chimney. Well actually, yeah, people started to afford chimneys
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Um. There was especially in say jolly
Speaker 1: old London, there was a lot of chimneys that sprung up,
Speaker 1: a lot of problems that arose, as we'll see later on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the it's kind of interesting to see
Speaker 1: the fireplace hasn't really changed much in like seven hundred years.
Speaker 1: And then you step back and you're like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: that's kind of evident when you think about the fireplace
Speaker 1: and how ridiculously inefficient it is. Yeah, it's kind of changed.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it depends what you It depends what
Speaker 1: your definition have changed. Hole in the wall with a
Speaker 1: whole above it that's tall and narrow and leads to
Speaker 1: the outside. Yeah, within that, there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of changing sure, sure, but the overall general design has
Speaker 1: has been relatively unchanged for seven years. It's like toilet paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're not as straight as they used to be.
Speaker 1: Um Ben Franklin was someone who did a lot of
Speaker 1: complaining in life. He did about when you know, he
Speaker 1: was just kind of person who would look around the
Speaker 1: world and in his everyday surroundings and say, why do
Speaker 1: people do it like this? That's stupid. I've been Franklin.
Speaker 1: There's better as listen to me. Take a peek under
Speaker 1: my silken robe. He very famously wrote that on the
Speaker 1: back of the Declaration of Independence. But fireplaces used to
Speaker 1: get under his skin, apparently because the design, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about this, the traditional fireplace is fairly wasteful. Oh,
Speaker 1: tremendously so. And it can even make your room colder, yes,
Speaker 1: which is counterintuitive. Yeah, it's like nonplused. Yeah, I looked
Speaker 1: that up, by the way, So nonplus I'm correct. The
Speaker 1: nonplus means you're agitated. Well, it means it means that
Speaker 1: you are surprised and confused to the point that you
Speaker 1: are unsure how to react. So not necessarily agitated, just
Speaker 1: but you're definitely not just like laid back. No, So
Speaker 1: Tignachar was not nonplused. She was not confused on how
Speaker 1: to react. She reacted the exact way, which is Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's just chill and very sweet. I didn't expect like
Speaker 1: some big show trust me from anybody that meets us. Well, no, so,
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to sound like I was disappointed. She didn't
Speaker 1: like throw those snap crackers and start taftings. No, I
Speaker 1: got exactly what I wanted, which was a very nice
Speaker 1: lady who gave me a big hug in a photo.
Speaker 1: I think that's come across. Yeah, that just I'm sensitive
Speaker 1: to that stuff. Once I started opening my mouth digging
Speaker 1: that hole. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Here's
Speaker 1: a little more route anyway. Um, let me let me
Speaker 1: give you a stat here. Wait. First, I think everyone
Speaker 1: wants to hear about how you felt when you met
Speaker 1: tig Nataro. I was super excited. Can you tell how
Speaker 1: was she? Uh So, here's a little stat for you.
Speaker 1: The National Association of home Builders did a survey, and
Speaker 1: I guess this is recent. It doesn't name the year,
Speaker 1: but um it sounds recent. People still want their fireplaces
Speaker 1: to the tune of seventy seven of home buyers say,
Speaker 1: and that's I guess in the US. Yeah, like even
Speaker 1: in I mean that's accounting for the hot places as well.
Speaker 1: Sure you know, so I would imagine in the cold
Speaker 1: places it's probably more like Yeah, well, remember I don't
Speaker 1: remember what episode it was, but we talked about how
Speaker 1: in New York it's very ghost these days to to
Speaker 1: have a fireplace that you use because it's so waste.
Speaker 1: That is ghost. Mean what I think it means now
Speaker 1: in doubting everything, it means super laid back and nonplus.
Speaker 1: Oh so like New Yorkers like, oh, you have a fireplace, Yes,
Speaker 1: how not green? Which I mean they're correct. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of un greenness associated with fireplace. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: especially as far as like air pollution goes air quality. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems. Sure, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: problems that come out of it. Like for example, I
Speaker 1: guess if we're gonna talk about this for a second,
Speaker 1: if you are a kid and you have um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, respiratory diseases, you're far likelier to be living
Speaker 1: in a house where your folks burn would So if
Speaker 1: you're a kid or an elderly person, respiratory distress can
Speaker 1: be brought on because smoke is gonna get in the
Speaker 1: room no matter how great the fireplace is, right, or
Speaker 1: if you're let's say, if you already have asthma or something,
Speaker 1: you're not doing yourself any favors by letting that smoke
Speaker 1: in the particles particulate matter creep in there. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: also I mean like house fires. There's like two house
Speaker 1: fires in the United States every year that resulting like
Speaker 1: ten people's deaths from directly from fireplaces. Yeah. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: no matter who you talked to, for the most part,
Speaker 1: the people say still worth it. Ye yeah. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: die of like blacklong and my house may burn down
Speaker 1: before I get a chance too. But I really loved
Speaker 1: fires in the winter, and I'm really I'm willing to
Speaker 1: take that risk. So you know my deal or do you?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. We live in a house that
Speaker 1: was built in nineteen and we're renovating it still forever.
Speaker 1: And we have the fire place that is not used
Speaker 1: and it's not able to be used unless we pay
Speaker 1: like some pretty good dough to get it retrofitted and
Speaker 1: the chimney worked on. And I for years have been
Speaker 1: leaving just little sticky notes and I'll write it in
Speaker 1: crayon on the bathroom wall and just little things like, hey, am,
Speaker 1: how about that fireplace? And she says, quit writing on
Speaker 1: the walls. Uh, We're not getting a fireplace just yet.
Speaker 1: But maybe I've been there for like ten years. When
Speaker 1: is when does our life? When do we start living
Speaker 1: our life? Is my question? With a with a fireplace,
Speaker 1: have you considered trading something she wants for the fireplace
Speaker 1: that doesn't work like that? Have you considered begging. That
Speaker 1: doesn't work either. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what I do. I wait until
Speaker 1: she goes out of town and they just do it yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but do it terrible way so that somebody is a
Speaker 1: professionalist to come in and go behind you. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they have no choice. You're like, I gotta get
Speaker 1: the fireplace guy in here. Now there's a giant hole
Speaker 1: in the wall. Uh. Long story short, though, we still
Speaker 1: don't have a fireplace. And I'm still despite all the negatives,
Speaker 1: and I try to lead a green life, but I
Speaker 1: just I want that wood burning thing. I don't want.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the substitutes. But and that's great if
Speaker 1: you're into that, because they are better in many, many ways.
Speaker 1: But I just love that wood crackle, the smell. I
Speaker 1: want that particular matter my lungs. You and seventies seven
Speaker 1: percent of us homeowners, Um, so yeah, most people do.
Speaker 1: Say I'm willing to look past the problems for a
Speaker 1: wood burning fireplace, But like you say, there are they're
Speaker 1: all there's alternatives, that's right, But we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: all of it here. Should we talk about the parts? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this is This is when I say
Speaker 1: like there was very little change to the design over
Speaker 1: seven years ago. It's true, man, Yeah, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: some of these parts existed. So, um, I did learn
Speaker 1: quite a bit in this. I thought it was pretty
Speaker 1: much the firebox and the flu that ran up the
Speaker 1: chimney and that's it. But there's more to it than
Speaker 1: that there. Well, yeah, these are I think these are
Speaker 1: the improvements that came over time. So you do have
Speaker 1: the heart that you mentioned that's gonna be built out
Speaker 1: of something fireproof. You don't want a wood heart. That'd
Speaker 1: be bad. It's probably rock or brick. And that's yeah.
Speaker 1: That's where you sit and drink your bourbon while you
Speaker 1: warm your back. It's like an apron on the floor
Speaker 1: that extends out from the fireplace. Yeah, and it can
Speaker 1: be even with the floor, as is the case now
Speaker 1: or the one I grew up with. I grew up
Speaker 1: with one of those Mac Daddy huge rock fireplaces. Those
Speaker 1: ones are like hand and you could sit on the thing.
Speaker 1: They're the best. They are the best, but they're also
Speaker 1: like just kid killers. They look like, you know, well
Speaker 1: not if you don't climb in it, okay, which I
Speaker 1: never did. Yeah, that that is pretty nice. You got
Speaker 1: the well, so you know, like the hearth extends out.
Speaker 1: But if you look usually up the walls along either
Speaker 1: side of the hole in the wall, and then above
Speaker 1: above it. Um, that's called the surround. It's usually made
Speaker 1: of something either that's the same as the hearth, same
Speaker 1: material as the hearth, or some other fireproof thing like
Speaker 1: tile or brick or stone. And that's just to basically
Speaker 1: prevent that fire from licking out of the firebox and
Speaker 1: setting the house on fire. So straw no good, no
Speaker 1: as a material. Uh. You have your firebox. That is
Speaker 1: just what you think it is. That's the square typically,
Speaker 1: although they're shaped a little differently. Now. Um, that's the
Speaker 1: square that holds your fire right, and it's where the
Speaker 1: smoke starts to collect. Um. What you're sending the stuff
Speaker 1: up to behind behind the firebox is actually called the
Speaker 1: smoke chamber. And there's a there's a transition area in
Speaker 1: between the firebox, which is where you actually have the fire,
Speaker 1: and the smoke chamber, which is above and slightly behind it.
Speaker 1: And there's it's called the throat. It's the opening that
Speaker 1: that connects those two things. And this the smoke chamber
Speaker 1: smoke box I think I've been calling it. It actually
Speaker 1: connects the firebox to the FLU and it's got some
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff going. And this is like where where
Speaker 1: some improvements were made to the design. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: FLU is surrounded by the chimney. Also again not straw,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be brick almost always. In the back rear
Speaker 1: of the smoke chamber, there's a smoke shelf. It's concave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you if you look at a fireplace, you
Speaker 1: just think it just goes straight back and up right.
Speaker 1: Well that some of the old designs did well, they
Speaker 1: were stupid. Yeah, that's why how it's changed them. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you go if you look at the back
Speaker 1: of the fireplace, if you could stick your head up
Speaker 1: into the firebox, you don't want to do that. But
Speaker 1: when there's no fire you don't want to do it. Period.
Speaker 1: You'll see that there's actually a shelf there and it's
Speaker 1: angled forward to in front of that. Like like I said,
Speaker 1: it used to be just sort of a cube and
Speaker 1: it went straight up. Now it's sort of zig zags
Speaker 1: uh back and forth a little bit its way to
Speaker 1: the FLU. That's right. So the whole point of that
Speaker 1: shelf and the zigzag is so that, um, when rain
Speaker 1: comes in, it doesn't get into the fire. It's almost
Speaker 1: basically a protective overhanging and um it also keeps particulates
Speaker 1: like soot and stuff from falling into the firebox too. Correct. Uh,
Speaker 1: that smoke shelf underneath it, you're gonna have the damper
Speaker 1: and that is that covering. That's uh, it's movable, and
Speaker 1: that separates the firebox from the place above it, and
Speaker 1: that keeps that's you know, and you don't have your fire,
Speaker 1: that's when you close. We used to stay close the
Speaker 1: flu uh And we didn't use the word damper in
Speaker 1: my house. Yeah. I don't know why, but that's technically
Speaker 1: what it is, just the damper and you get your
Speaker 1: their different mechanisms. But ours had a little uh little
Speaker 1: uh islet circle thing that you would stick. We used
Speaker 1: our fire poker and we would just unhook it and
Speaker 1: then close the damper and that when your fire is
Speaker 1: not burning. You want to keep that thing open when
Speaker 1: it's burning. Obviously, Well yeah, you're gonna find out really quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's closed. It's like an epiglottis for the fireplace. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got a throat, why not what else we have? Um,
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a chimney damper at the very top of
Speaker 1: the flu could close too, it's unnecessary, Oh you think, sure,
Speaker 1: But then uh, at the very top of the chimney,
Speaker 1: there's something called sparker rest or, which is usually like
Speaker 1: some sort of mesh grate that will allow like gas
Speaker 1: and in air, but we'll keep um little embers and
Speaker 1: stuff from going out onto your roof and setting your
Speaker 1: house on fire. Yeah, especially like paper tends to float
Speaker 1: up and out. Uh, the chimney cap can it serves
Speaker 1: the same purpose, And that a lot of times is
Speaker 1: one and the same, Like the chimney cap and the
Speaker 1: spark arrest are all one piece. A lot a lot
Speaker 1: of times is that it? I haven't heard of this
Speaker 1: ash dump. That sounds pretty neat though it's basically I
Speaker 1: guess a hatch in the floor where you can just
Speaker 1: sweep the ashes. I guess that sounds like in the
Speaker 1: olden days when your house was built on you know,
Speaker 1: two bricks, and it would just drop into a bucket below,
Speaker 1: as would your poop. There are different buckets under your
Speaker 1: house that collected things. Do you want to make sure
Speaker 1: you knew which bucket you're grabbing at any given time.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to surprise. And then finally got your
Speaker 1: little door. It's either you know, glass or metal, or
Speaker 1: it might just be a screen. We never had in
Speaker 1: mind growing up. We never had the glass door. Sure,
Speaker 1: just the screen. We had one of those in in
Speaker 1: my high school house and it was a We had
Speaker 1: a gas fireplace. Yeah it was fine, but I was like,
Speaker 1: this is not wood. All right, Well let's take a
Speaker 1: break in. Um, we'll talk about would after this. So
Speaker 1: we're back, Chuck, and we're going to talk This would
Speaker 1: not be an apt episode if we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: basically the physics of how a fireplace works, because there
Speaker 1: are some physics involved, pretty impressive ones if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this article said lighting a fire inside your
Speaker 1: living room and it kind of hits home, Like how
Speaker 1: kind of crazy that is? And said there are two challenges,
Speaker 1: one not setting your house on fire to keep the
Speaker 1: smoke from entering the room. But yeah, I never really
Speaker 1: thought about it. And everything we just talked about basically
Speaker 1: was to prevent the first part catching your house on fire,
Speaker 1: that's surround the hearth, all that stuff. But then if
Speaker 1: you get a little more into the guts of the fireplace,
Speaker 1: that's to keep the smoke from filling up in the room.
Speaker 1: And when you when you look around your house, uh,
Speaker 1: you will find that there's a lot of different places
Speaker 1: for air to get in. And that's actually quite necessary
Speaker 1: for a fireplace. It's quite necessary for living and breathing. Sure,
Speaker 1: for breathing, it's important for that too, but to keep
Speaker 1: a fire going and to keep the smoke from going
Speaker 1: filling up your living room, which again you'll find out
Speaker 1: very quickly if you don't have your your damper open,
Speaker 1: which I had before. Um, if you if you have
Speaker 1: air comeing into your house, then you can keep the air,
Speaker 1: the smoke from the fire going up the way it's
Speaker 1: supposed to. And and that happened simply because heat tends
Speaker 1: to rise. Yeah you don't. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: places I get a nice flow of air in my
Speaker 1: house is from closed windows. Oh yeah, you got thin windows? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have it. We've only redone a few of the windows.
Speaker 1: That's on my like must do list is to get
Speaker 1: all the windows replaced. But it ain't cheap. But you're
Speaker 1: gonna earn that money back, you know. Over time with efficiencies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have those old windows, Like it can
Speaker 1: be fully shut and you can stand and your hair
Speaker 1: will blow. Like, where's this coming from? It's going through
Speaker 1: the glass. It feels like it's defying the laws of physics.
Speaker 1: It's freezing near my windows. Now I remember you mean
Speaker 1: I had a house like that, knows I mean the wavy,
Speaker 1: vaguely wavy kind of windows. Yeah, those were thin. It's
Speaker 1: kind of neat though, to think that I'm living like
Speaker 1: a settler basically. Yeah, in parts of my training your
Speaker 1: own butter so, um, yeah, you want to talk about
Speaker 1: the different kinds of heat. Yeah, so you've got conduction, convection,
Speaker 1: and radiation, and fireplaces use convection and radiation but not conduction,
Speaker 1: hopefully not conduction, no conduction mains. Your house is catching fire,
Speaker 1: I means you're literally touching something hot, correct, Yeah, But confection,
Speaker 1: of course, it's when that hot air circulating to cooler
Speaker 1: areas of your home in this gate, and the radiation
Speaker 1: is just literally feeling that flame warmth. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: In the case of the fireplace, it's infrared and visible light,
Speaker 1: electro magnetic radiation. Basically, there is actually some radio waves
Speaker 1: in some microwaves produced by a fire, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. But for the most part, you're feeling infrared
Speaker 1: radiation and you're seeing visible light radiation. Right, So when
Speaker 1: you're when you're warming yourself by a fire, you're you're
Speaker 1: being radiated. Thermal radiation is being admitted from the fireplace.
Speaker 1: But there's also convection and can yeah big times right.
Speaker 1: Convection actually makes up most of the way that heat
Speaker 1: is um moved through a fire, And because you want
Speaker 1: to keep the smoke out of your house, you're also
Speaker 1: actually keeping those convection currents from going into your house
Speaker 1: as well. Meaning as Ben Franklin pointing out, because remember
Speaker 1: he was a huge complainer that most of the heat
Speaker 1: from a fire is just purposefully being funneled out of
Speaker 1: the house up through the flu in the chimney. I
Speaker 1: think it drove him nuts a little bit looking through
Speaker 1: some of these quotes, yeah, because he really spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time like trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make a fireplace better. You gotta understand though, too, like
Speaker 1: when he was alive, these weren't just for like charm, No,
Speaker 1: they were to like stay alive, and the idea that
Speaker 1: you were wasting all is fuel. I think probably part
Speaker 1: of it also is the inefficiency probably drove him nuts. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: i mean he's dead, right, Like, you've got so much
Speaker 1: heat just going right up the chimney, and not only
Speaker 1: that when you get that draft, because the fire needs
Speaker 1: the oxygen, so that's another reason it's pulling this air in,
Speaker 1: but it's also pulling in you've got your thermostat on
Speaker 1: and your heat going, it's pulling some of that warmer
Speaker 1: air in and up and out as well, right, and
Speaker 1: even air that it's warming through convection, like that's that's
Speaker 1: being irradiated out of the fireplace. It's being sucked in.
Speaker 1: And as a result again that that when the air
Speaker 1: is sucked into the fire and is pushed up the
Speaker 1: flu through the chimney, it's got to be replaced. It's
Speaker 1: creating what's called a negative pressurization, right, and that means
Speaker 1: that air wants to come in and replace the air
Speaker 1: that's being sucked out and up the chimney. So coal
Speaker 1: they're from outside is being drawn in, which is how
Speaker 1: like you said before, right, but the fire can actually
Speaker 1: make your house even colder because it's pushing the warm
Speaker 1: air out through the fireplace and sucking in cold there
Speaker 1: from the outside. Yeah, and it's not um it says
Speaker 1: here here's the stat that said that a traditional fireplace
Speaker 1: can draw four to ten times as much air from
Speaker 1: the room that it needs to actually burn that fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like five hundred cubic leaders of air a minute. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So compare that to like the smart fireplace a k a.
Speaker 1: The wood burning stove a the TV with the fire
Speaker 1: burning on it. Right, I love a wood burning stove. Man,
Speaker 1: those are great, do you. I've never really been into those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I got no problems with them. It's not a
Speaker 1: it doesn't It's not good for every home, aren't They
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous? Like they get super hot, right, they're really hot.
Speaker 1: So like if you fell onto one or something, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't put uh the skateboard next to it the
Speaker 1: banana peel okay, step one. But um, and you know
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have like a super modern house with
Speaker 1: a wood burning stove, like it's a little more charming
Speaker 1: in your cabin or something. Actually, I was looking through
Speaker 1: I think a Popular Mechanics or something. I had different
Speaker 1: types of of of stoves stoves, and there are some
Speaker 1: that are kind of moud. Oh well, that's cool, so
Speaker 1: they're trying to bring it into the future. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: they're remarkably efficient. Um well, how much did you say?
Speaker 1: Five cubic leaders? I believe of air a minute is
Speaker 1: sucked into a fireplace the average fireplace, and only twenty
Speaker 1: for a woodburning stove. Yeah, that's pretty efficient. So they're
Speaker 1: super hot. You can you can cook on them too,
Speaker 1: you can boil your water and do all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: You know, just don't touch it. No. I think the
Speaker 1: Randazzo has had one in their place in Connecticut. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's supposedly worked super well, like it'll
Speaker 1: it'll heat a room and then some yeah you know. Well,
Speaker 1: and the the reason why it's because it's it's like a
Speaker 1: contained fireplace, but it's not just wide open. It's out
Speaker 1: in the open. Yeah yeah, but I mean you shut
Speaker 1: the door to it, right, You shut the door to it,
Speaker 1: so you're saving the warmer around it from being sucked in, right.
Speaker 1: And then it's also removed from the interior of the
Speaker 1: wall so that it can heat on all sides. It's
Speaker 1: right up there so you can fall on it. And
Speaker 1: then the flu itself can go up and then out
Speaker 1: of the room so that the hot gas that's being
Speaker 1: carried out can heat the air in the room around it.
Speaker 1: So you've got that stove pipe. Yeah, you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of different ways the air is
Speaker 1: being warmed in your house by a wood stove. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look into these new ones. There's new ones.
Speaker 1: There's also like very there's some famous ones. They're like
Speaker 1: mid century design that are super mod um Swedish ones, uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's like they're ones that look kind of
Speaker 1: like the traditional ones, but they're they're newly built and
Speaker 1: like their improved designs. Remember the old seventies fireplaces that
Speaker 1: were uh like orange um metal, and that would the
Speaker 1: Swedish one I'm talking about. Really, it's based on that
Speaker 1: old old seventies Look, No, that's the one I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the seventies. Okay, Yeah, there's newer ones too, but
Speaker 1: that the iconic orange one. Yeah that's yeah. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: my friend, one friend in high school, Chris Boten, had
Speaker 1: the most seventies house. Oh dude, it was wonderful, like
Speaker 1: it was the orange fireplace surround like built in a
Speaker 1: terrarium set deal with plants and rocks and things. I
Speaker 1: think there might have been a little fake waterfall. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was macromy at some point, but it
Speaker 1: was just it had one of those sunken living rooms,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and looking back now like it's a
Speaker 1: super cool like mod house, like people now would be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's preserved in time. It's the greatest
Speaker 1: thing ever. Like his hit a water but of course,
Speaker 1: but um one of his walls, his entire wall was
Speaker 1: like a blown up photograph of like a Hawaiian sunset. Oh,
Speaker 1: we had a couple of those in our in our house.
Speaker 1: Not not a Hawaiian sunset, but we had like a
Speaker 1: forest with a waterfall going through it. And then in
Speaker 1: our kitchen a forest mural no no water, that's very
Speaker 1: ice storm. Uh yeah, I've never seen that movie, but
Speaker 1: I can imagine, because yeah, I mean, like key parties
Speaker 1: are happening and people are drinking eggnog around the orange
Speaker 1: lacquered fireplace. It's a wonderful time. But let's say you
Speaker 1: have just the regular, regular old fireplace to start. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you want to you come across it, you say, what
Speaker 1: what the heck is this thing? What do I do well.
Speaker 1: The first thing you do is you all got into
Speaker 1: the airnet and go to house stuff works and look
Speaker 1: up how to operate a fireplace? Because how stuff works
Speaker 1: has you covered? Man? Yeah, I mean the only thing
Speaker 1: I could say this would probably be good for is
Speaker 1: if you've never literally never started a fire. But it
Speaker 1: seems like coming knowledge to me. Yeah, there's some details
Speaker 1: in there that I don't know. Like hardwood's right, you
Speaker 1: don't want to burn pine or any soft wood. Okay,
Speaker 1: you want your hardwood's like hickory ash oak kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you want it seasoned. That's the key. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: can't go cut down a tree in the yard and
Speaker 1: chop it up and burn it the next week because
Speaker 1: it will smoke and you'll see literally, I mean when
Speaker 1: I go camping, we get rooked all the time on
Speaker 1: firewood purchases, and we sit down for the evening, throw
Speaker 1: the wood on there, and you just start hearing the
Speaker 1: sizzle and you see the water just literally boiling out
Speaker 1: of it, and we're just like, man, well, okay, that
Speaker 1: roads guy, I'm gonna go back. Here's how. Here's how.
Speaker 1: You got to test it right there in front of
Speaker 1: the guy and watch him score him. Take two logs
Speaker 1: and you knock them together, and what you're looking for
Speaker 1: is a hollow sound, no thud, hollow sound. Then you
Speaker 1: know it's season. Yeah, but he would go like city
Speaker 1: boy that you know this is North Georgia, lob lolly pine.
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're talking about. You'd say, well,
Speaker 1: pines the soft wood. I want hardwoods. Where's the hardwoods?
Speaker 1: I want to call it. Shoot off my property and
Speaker 1: leave the boiled peanuts. You'd say, I'm gonna take half
Speaker 1: of the boiled peanuts for my time. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like we always get wet wood, but um, at least
Speaker 1: six months you want that wood drying out. They say
Speaker 1: a full year. What you're looking for is moisture level
Speaker 1: by the time you're burning it, right, you could also
Speaker 1: put in a moisture level temperature moisture indicator in the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go that you buy the big city. But
Speaker 1: you you look at the ends the wood too, and
Speaker 1: you'll see that it's cracked and split. It's usually dark
Speaker 1: like gray. It just looked it looks aged. But the
Speaker 1: the dead giveaways the hollow thud sound. I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: didn't know that, so I'm gonna try that the hollow
Speaker 1: thud or the I'm sorry, the hollow sound, not the thud. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for. So you take your fire,
Speaker 1: or you take your wood, you put it on your
Speaker 1: fire grate. Although so this is a component of the fireplace,
Speaker 1: it's not an actual like part of it. The fire
Speaker 1: grate is like this iron stand. It's a great. There's
Speaker 1: really no other way to describe it, although some fireficionados
Speaker 1: suggest that you should use what are called and irons,
Speaker 1: which are well, an and iron is basically a great,
Speaker 1: missing the great part in the middle. It's basically these
Speaker 1: two stands, a pair of stands that go in the fireplace,
Speaker 1: and it holds the logs aloft through. The great does
Speaker 1: the same thing, except um, it keeps burning like embers
Speaker 1: on the grade. A little more. The reason why people
Speaker 1: are like and irons are grays because, however, you have
Speaker 1: it a great, you're an and iron. You want to
Speaker 1: keep a bed of embers going because that is going
Speaker 1: to eventually become hot enough that you could throw anything
Speaker 1: on there and it'll start to catch fire. Um. So
Speaker 1: when you when you take your split logs, you put
Speaker 1: them on your grate, or your and irons. Put a
Speaker 1: little kindling beneath them, which is like thinner wood that
Speaker 1: will catch fire easily, light it on fire. Oh, I
Speaker 1: forgot first, you want to pour about a half a
Speaker 1: leader of kerosene on this that it starts. You do
Speaker 1: not misspeak. That is just a joke. Kids. You don't
Speaker 1: ever want to use any sort of lighter, fluid or
Speaker 1: anything like that to start indoor fire. Kids, you should
Speaker 1: not be starting a fire in the first place, so
Speaker 1: stop right now. This is for grown ups, that's right.
Speaker 1: But you do want to use something like, I don't know, newspaper,
Speaker 1: just a piece of paper to light the kindling. But no,
Speaker 1: you don't want to use any sort of acceller it. Well,
Speaker 1: people don't get newspapers anymore, so you can just uh
Speaker 1: light your kindle or your iPad right, throw that in
Speaker 1: there instead. It'll it'll start, But that kiddeling is gonna catch,
Speaker 1: and if your wood is season it'll catch too. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you gotta fire. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: may want to adjust that damper a little bit just
Speaker 1: to keep your air flowed how you want it um
Speaker 1: and then and again when you're when you're when you
Speaker 1: have a fire going. One of the two main things
Speaker 1: you're trying to do in addition to not burn down
Speaker 1: your house is to keep the smoke from coming back
Speaker 1: in the room. And sometimes that's easier said than done,
Speaker 1: because every house has something called a neutral pressure plane. Okay,
Speaker 1: so above the neutral pressure plane, the air is pressurized
Speaker 1: so it wants to push air out, and below it
Speaker 1: air is the The pressure inside the house is lower,
Speaker 1: so air wants to be sucked in. So as long
Speaker 1: as your your fireplace, your chimney is above that neutral
Speaker 1: pre sure plane, you're gonna be okay, the air is
Speaker 1: gonna want to go in. Um if it so happens
Speaker 1: that the air around your fireplace is a higher pressure,
Speaker 1: then the air is actually going to be pushed down
Speaker 1: the chimney, into the firebox and out into the room,
Speaker 1: which is no good. But you can solve it pretty
Speaker 1: easily by just opening a window and allowing air to
Speaker 1: come in or go out, depending or have a ninety
Speaker 1: year old windows right where you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about it at all to do because the air just
Speaker 1: flows through freely. So if you wanna you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about how inefficient they are. If you want to
Speaker 1: improve that efficiency. There are a couple of cool things
Speaker 1: you can do. Uh. One is called a tubular grate,
Speaker 1: and that is exactly what you think it is. Instead
Speaker 1: of just a great um made of solid iron at
Speaker 1: the bottom, it is a bit of a cage. It
Speaker 1: looks like sort of like the motorcycle, uh, exhaust pipes
Speaker 1: and things. So, um, you know, it's just their tubular
Speaker 1: So it's gonna draw in the cool air in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the tubes, and then it's gonna rise and
Speaker 1: then loop back around and shoot out the top of
Speaker 1: the tubes into your room. Yeah, well it should work
Speaker 1: in theory. But remember if your fireplaces working properly, sucking
Speaker 1: air from the room into the fire to fuel it
Speaker 1: and then shooting it out the chimney. So this air
Speaker 1: that's being warmed could be sucked right back into the fire,
Speaker 1: that's right. But if you have it so that the
Speaker 1: the the tubular grate is enclosed by some doors, but
Speaker 1: the ends of the great can go out into the room, Bam,
Speaker 1: you're set. Oh is that a thing? Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that. Uh. There's another thing called a well this
Speaker 1: is what when um Emily's parents have moved to Georgia now,
Speaker 1: but when they lived in Ohio, they had one of
Speaker 1: these recirculators that was a fan. Basically, you would turn
Speaker 1: on a switch and it would literally blow heat from
Speaker 1: kind of underneath the great back out into the room.
Speaker 1: And it worked really well, but it always seemed to
Speaker 1: blow a little stink out with it. Stink, you know,
Speaker 1: fire stink. Okay, yeah, I mean you couldn't see smoke
Speaker 1: pouring out of it or anything, but it was still
Speaker 1: affecting your respiratory. Well, I mean it didn't affect me
Speaker 1: so much, but I could tell it was happening. Like
Speaker 1: every recirculator I've ever seen or been around has kind
Speaker 1: of had the same deal to me, whether it's gas
Speaker 1: only or whatever, it always just seems to have this.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm very sensitive to odors anyway, So
Speaker 1: maybe that's something to do with that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm a super smeller. Are you a super smeller?
Speaker 1: What do you smell right now? I smell Knoll like
Speaker 1: three three rooms over. You are a super smeller because
Speaker 1: we are hermetically sealed in here? Not true? Uh? And
Speaker 1: then those glass doors you talked about, it's another way
Speaker 1: to increase efficiency, but you're awesome. So going to literally
Speaker 1: just cut down on the heat that gets into the
Speaker 1: room as much as Yeah, there's not a lot that
Speaker 1: you can do to have a dramatic impact on the
Speaker 1: efficiency of the fire. For the most part, it's going
Speaker 1: to lose more heat than it puts out. You just
Speaker 1: want to hope that you're you can warm your room,
Speaker 1: you're in the fire enough so that you don't mind,
Speaker 1: or if you're just after the aesthetic, then yeah, good
Speaker 1: for you. You mean. And I lived in a place
Speaker 1: where we had a fireplace for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: We were hooked on it, hooked on it, yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we could get that that room like hot
Speaker 1: y you know, if you keep the fire going long enough.
Speaker 1: That's the key. You just have to waste more than
Speaker 1: you can imagine. All right, Well, we'll take another little
Speaker 1: quickie break here and we'll come back and talk about
Speaker 1: some more options and very depressing history of child labor.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. All right, Josh, we've been talking about would
Speaker 1: a lot because it's clearly the superior fireplace, seriously, but
Speaker 1: you can you can get the old gas fake log
Speaker 1: fireplace these days. My mom made the switch. It's fake
Speaker 1: logs look pretty good these days. So wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute. She had a wood burning fireplace and
Speaker 1: had a gas insert put in. Yes, wow, okay, So
Speaker 1: because she had a like I had growing up to
Speaker 1: the gas starter. Um, so you would light the gas,
Speaker 1: throw the wood on, get it going, turn the gas off.
Speaker 1: Got so she just retrofitted it. Um actually I did
Speaker 1: it my brother into full gas with the fake logs that, um,
Speaker 1: they look good these days. You know you can arrange
Speaker 1: them in yourself in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing. Right,
Speaker 1: they don't come in that mound that shape to look
Speaker 1: like three logs laying on top of each other. No,
Speaker 1: that it's come a long way, I'll say that. Don't
Speaker 1: They have beds of embers now too and all that?
Speaker 1: But then it catch the little flickery glow. Yep, what
Speaker 1: is it? They've come a long way with trying to
Speaker 1: simulate that look. Pica pica pica. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is. Uh, it's like the Japanese word for that,
Speaker 1: like the little tinkling glow. I don't know I'm saying
Speaker 1: it wrong, but it's a throwback. I said it wrong
Speaker 1: on some other episode years back. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: pretty pretty No, yeah, but that's something different. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't they go back and find it. They We'll just
Speaker 1: end it. This whole part out. Uh So the gas
Speaker 1: logs um covering the gas event. You're gonna burn that
Speaker 1: fire behind glass, it's gonna give off radiant and convicted heat.
Speaker 1: You're probably gonna have a air um not recycling what
Speaker 1: I call it exchanger air exchanger. They're working as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it's so much more efficient
Speaker 1: is because it doesn't require any air from inside your room.
Speaker 1: It draws air through a pipe from the outdoors because
Speaker 1: it requires much less right, Um, so it's not going
Speaker 1: to take any of that warmed air that it's warming
Speaker 1: for itself to to burn. Is it's gonna say, you
Speaker 1: keep it. I'm gas. I'm super efficient. I love you
Speaker 1: in ways that wood could never imagine. Wood is dirty
Speaker 1: and bumbling, and why do you love wood so much
Speaker 1: more than me? I'm gas. So if you're getting an
Speaker 1: new house, you're probably gonna have a gas fireplace. If
Speaker 1: you're getting a fireplace added to a home, it's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be a gas fireplace. That's the direction they're steering
Speaker 1: you these days. Yeah, oh yeah, I would guess because gas.
Speaker 1: I would guess you're gonna pay significantly more for a
Speaker 1: wood burning fireplace to be built into your new house
Speaker 1: than a gas one. You think, yeah, probably just because
Speaker 1: so I'll bet there's relatively few, especially down below the
Speaker 1: Mason Dixon line, relatively few builders who know how to
Speaker 1: put in a wood burning fireplace. Yeah, you've got to
Speaker 1: find a builder from nineteen basically, and he's gonna want
Speaker 1: to give you one of those orange modern jobs that
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, this is cool, but no, I want
Speaker 1: like the real thing. Yeah, it's like, this is real.
Speaker 1: So they're very efficient to these gas fireplaces. The gas
Speaker 1: burns cleanly. Uh, they even have them that are event free. Um,
Speaker 1: but people also say, you know what if your house
Speaker 1: is not like Chucks and it is actually pretty tight
Speaker 1: sealed and sealed up, then uh, they can actually deplete
Speaker 1: oxygen or moisture can build up. So the jury is
Speaker 1: still out somewhat on these gas fireplaces. I say the
Speaker 1: jury is in and I'm the jury, and I say,
Speaker 1: event free fireplace is a stupid idea. It's pumping carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide into your house. That's not a that's never good.
Speaker 1: You would think, yeah, you can get an ethanol fireplace.
Speaker 1: This one seems like okay, you've seen him before, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you go to a Marriott courtyard or something
Speaker 1: like that, they'll have like the chair situated around a
Speaker 1: table with a fireplace in the middle of the table.
Speaker 1: It's nut. It's the flame is actually cold. It's basically
Speaker 1: like right, it's basically like a stern o fireplace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you want to light your fun due pod
Speaker 1: or something like that from beneath it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: I think, virtually. Uh, And then you can get the
Speaker 1: uh woe unto you if you opt for the electric fireplace. Well,
Speaker 1: there's some now where you can get like an entertainment
Speaker 1: center with like a TV and then beneath it a
Speaker 1: fake electric fireplace. Yeah, it's cool. So an electric fireplaces
Speaker 1: has no fire. Um, it is a heater and it
Speaker 1: you know, it simulates the look of a fire if
Speaker 1: you're four years old and squinting, if you're squinty four
Speaker 1: year old. But you know, we don't want to yuck
Speaker 1: someone's yum. So if that's your bag, then more power
Speaker 1: to you. It's just not for me. I have to
Speaker 1: take issue though, with this article. It says that it's
Speaker 1: emission free. It's emission free on the user end, it's
Speaker 1: still electricity, which means producing emissions at the coal firepower
Speaker 1: plant that's producing that electricity. Don't be cool if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a mission free No, no, we're gonna yuck that yum. Uh.
Speaker 1: Safety wise, you gotta watch out for those sparks. If
Speaker 1: you got carpet around or hard woods, I reckon keep
Speaker 1: your bag of oily rags away from the fireplace, a
Speaker 1: big one. Don't put You might want to fire extinguisher,
Speaker 1: but don't put it in the fireplace right itself. Carbon
Speaker 1: monoxide investing in a carbon monoxide detector is worthwhile. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be like a smart carbon monoxide detector,
Speaker 1: although get one of those if you want. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: if you're using a wood burning fireplace, at the very least,
Speaker 1: get yourself a cheap but decent carbon monoxide detector. Smoke
Speaker 1: detectors not quite enough, Yeah, I think I think you
Speaker 1: have to have those now. Didn't that the new code?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't read the zoning codes in
Speaker 1: a while. Building codes. Uh, you should take a look.
Speaker 1: This is one of those kind of once a year things.
Speaker 1: If you know what you're doing, you can at least
Speaker 1: get a flashlight and kind of look everything over and
Speaker 1: see if there's anything obvious, like if your flute cap
Speaker 1: is no longer on your chimney hurricane hit. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: they're big cracks or anything, So what's wrong with yours?
Speaker 1: Cracks like your house would catch on fire. All I
Speaker 1: know is the guy did a lot of like uh uh,
Speaker 1: maybe he just wasn't feeling it that thing. No, he
Speaker 1: didn't put on a good show. Um. He he came
Speaker 1: over because he's in their specialty is old houses and
Speaker 1: old fireplaces. So I thought this guy is gonna be like, oh, great,
Speaker 1: this is what I do. He acted like he didn't
Speaker 1: want to do the job right. But that's not like
Speaker 1: that's a lot of work. Man. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: fix your chimney on the inside and it's cracked here,
Speaker 1: and you got this, and he got that. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's what you advertise, is you fix old situations.
Speaker 1: Have you you should bring somebody else out. Yeah I
Speaker 1: didn't like that guy. Yah, you're gonna bring out someone
Speaker 1: with some little moxie, But you do. Even if you
Speaker 1: think that your fireplace is doing great, it pays to
Speaker 1: pay somebody to come out and look at it inside,
Speaker 1: Like is it too much to ask for a little
Speaker 1: energy from your fireplace guy a little while factor? Maybe yes,
Speaker 1: you're correct, you do need a pro every now and
Speaker 1: then to come out. And they're called chimney sweets. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Creosote is something if you look up creosote c R
Speaker 1: E O S O T E online. Uh, it sort
Speaker 1: of looks like black lava built up on the inside
Speaker 1: of your chimney, right, and it itself could catch fire
Speaker 1: and you have a chimney fire in which case, and
Speaker 1: it sounds a little counterintuitive, like, well, there's fire going
Speaker 1: through it all the time. Fire going through it is
Speaker 1: much different from fire like your chimney being on fire itself.
Speaker 1: And uh, if your chimneys on fire, your house can
Speaker 1: catch fire fairly easy, especially if you have cracks in there,
Speaker 1: because it goes and all of a sudden some pressure
Speaker 1: treated too by fours, Like oh, oh, you don't want
Speaker 1: to burn that pressure treated two by four by the way,
Speaker 1: as would I don't think we mentioned that. Uh. One
Speaker 1: thing you can burn though, which I wouldn't use but
Speaker 1: it's a called a chimney sweep log or a creosote log,
Speaker 1: and it's just a special log. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a a dura flame. It's a prefab log. It's a
Speaker 1: chemical log, but it's supposed to break down that creosote.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. Something about that made me
Speaker 1: My radar went off, like I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: the best way to do things. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: any proof, but I hear chemical log that knocks that
Speaker 1: creosote loose, and it just didn't sound like the smart approach. Well,
Speaker 1: even them, the Chimney Safety Institute of America says no, no, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: those things kind of work, but you want like actual
Speaker 1: scrubbing of the interior of your chimney, which is what
Speaker 1: chimney sweeps did. Yeah. Man, if you if you want
Speaker 1: Moxie and your chimney sweep, you go to somebody's parents
Speaker 1: and say, I want to buy your four year old
Speaker 1: boy and making my chimney sweep slave. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: earlier we teased and promised the child labor um horror show,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much what things were like in Jolly
Speaker 1: Old England. After sixty second September to the sorry fifth September. Technically, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Great Fire of London changed a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and one of them was chimneys were a little bit
Speaker 1: narrow and they had a lot more rules as far
Speaker 1: as how clean you had to keep them. And so,
Speaker 1: like you said, what you would do is you would
Speaker 1: You can't put an adult up there, No, not really,
Speaker 1: but you can't put a five year old boy or four,
Speaker 1: I think is the youngest I saw them doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you would literally buy child from a poor person,
Speaker 1: stick this boy up in there. They were your quote
Speaker 1: unquote apprentice, which basically was child slaves, unpaid child labor
Speaker 1: zero dollars and actually chimney sweeping at the time. So
Speaker 1: after the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: I believe it was mandated by the Queen or Parliament
Speaker 1: or somebody that everybody needed their chimneys like kept up with.
Speaker 1: So chimney sweeps became a thing. But they actually swept
Speaker 1: chimneys free. It was a free service. The way that
Speaker 1: chimney sweeps made their money was from the soot that
Speaker 1: they gathered. They would sell it as fertilizer. Oh, I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say sponsorships, Like they would show up
Speaker 1: like they're Chevy tahoeck yet or something is like nothing
Speaker 1: gets your chimney clean, like son of a gum by
Speaker 1: stp so um. They would stick these kids in there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would literally light a fire under their butt
Speaker 1: to make them work faster. The kids would shimmy and
Speaker 1: distort their body to shimmy in this little eight in
Speaker 1: eighteen inch wide chimney and uh chip loose this creosote
Speaker 1: and soot that would then because they're working above their head,
Speaker 1: would follow all over them. They would take a bath
Speaker 1: once a week, maybe once every month, maybe once every
Speaker 1: two or three months, depending on who you're asking. So
Speaker 1: these children are literally not I mean, if they survived
Speaker 1: this experience at all, they're not going to live past
Speaker 1: middle age. Right, So what you just described was a
Speaker 1: good day. Yeah, there were all sorts of other horrible
Speaker 1: maladies that could come about the formation of their skeletons.
Speaker 1: Because these kids are like four or five, six, eight, ten,
Speaker 1: twelve years old, they're still developing, but they're spending like
Speaker 1: hours upon hours every day in these cramped chimneys. So
Speaker 1: their bones, especially the bones and their ankles and knees
Speaker 1: tended to grow in a deformed way. There's something the
Speaker 1: first industrial linked cancer ever identified. It is called chimney
Speaker 1: sweeps cancer. Other people call it scrotal carcinoma. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: the the um scrotum was irritated by soot and it
Speaker 1: would produce warts, and these wards, if they went untreated,
Speaker 1: would turn into a carcinoma, which eventually if it was
Speaker 1: if it wasn't cut out, would um. The tumor would
Speaker 1: grow into the testes and then into the abdomen. And
Speaker 1: it was a very very painful way to die. Kids
Speaker 1: like twelve years of age were dying of scrotal cancer
Speaker 1: from this. Yeah. You uh get up pre dawn. You
Speaker 1: worked till the nighttime hours, three hundred and sixty four
Speaker 1: days a year. Uh. The one day that these kids
Speaker 1: would get off was May Day, International Labor Day. Uh.
Speaker 1: They would sleep then. You know we said they collected
Speaker 1: that ash and soot and sold it. They would store
Speaker 1: all this stuff in sacks and the kids would then
Speaker 1: sleep in those rooms, still ingesting all this stuff in
Speaker 1: the air. Uh, and quite often they would literally get
Speaker 1: stuck and dye in these tim Here here's the part
Speaker 1: where I started a hyperventilate just thinking about this. From Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like this thing called positional asphyxia. There's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting Vice article called like a Brief History of
Speaker 1: people getting stuck in chimneys, and they actually illustrate how
Speaker 1: positional asphyxia happens using the Grinch. As he's going down
Speaker 1: the chimney, his feet start to get above his head
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he's stuck. You can't get
Speaker 1: out of that position. This would happen to real live
Speaker 1: English boys and American too, apparently, who would get stuck
Speaker 1: in the chimneys that they were cleaning out and would
Speaker 1: die there because they would aspixate their their abdomen, couldn't
Speaker 1: couldn't take in breaths any longer. Right, Um. It happened
Speaker 1: a lot, and actually finally it happened enough times that
Speaker 1: Parliament started to get involved. They first got involved in
Speaker 1: with the Chimney Sweeps Act and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. You guys are buying four year old kids.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. Emney sweeps can be no younger
Speaker 1: than eight. That was their first stab at at at
Speaker 1: at reform, right, and obviously this is child labor was
Speaker 1: a lot different back then as far as how we
Speaker 1: thought about when kids should work, right, but or the
Speaker 1: idea of childhood hadn't even come about yet. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: even so, even for a time where it was believed
Speaker 1: that children should put forth an effort and work like
Speaker 1: four and five year old kids, it's just ridiculous, sure right.
Speaker 1: They also added though, that if you are a master
Speaker 1: of a chimney sweep, you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: they are allowed to go to church on Sundays. That
Speaker 1: was the other part of the seventeen eighty eight Act, right.
Speaker 1: Then in the eighteen forty Act they up the aged
Speaker 1: twenty one, which was significant, but apparently it wasn't really
Speaker 1: enforced until eighteen seventy five when this this one kid
Speaker 1: died and he was basically the straw that broke the
Speaker 1: camel's back for the public. Yeah. His name was George Brewster,
Speaker 1: and he worked for a a gentleman by the name
Speaker 1: of William Wire. And I say, gentlemen, what I mean
Speaker 1: is a scumbag. Uh. And he was cleaning a hospital,
Speaker 1: Chimney Fullborn Hospital, and he got stuck and the great
Speaker 1: efforts were made to rescue him. Actually pulled down a
Speaker 1: wall to try and get to him. He died and
Speaker 1: Wire has actually found guilty of manslaughter. And his death
Speaker 1: was really a big awareness jolt for everybody, and it
Speaker 1: became part of the campaign. And um, that was pretty
Speaker 1: much the end of using kids. Uh you know, he
Speaker 1: was apparently the last child to die in a chimney
Speaker 1: in England, and England, I guess in the US they
Speaker 1: kept using him for a while. So shameful really is
Speaker 1: now if you see a chimney, sweet tell four year
Speaker 1: old to go up in the chimney. You called police
Speaker 1: because that is illegal these days. No better where you live. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's all agree to that. Do you got anything else?
Speaker 1: No fireplaces? Just in time for the fall? Well yeah,
Speaker 1: November here in Atlanta and in the mid eighties, so right,
Speaker 1: ready to get that fireplace one? That's right. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about fireplaces, including how to light
Speaker 1: of fire, you can go find that up by typing
Speaker 1: fireplace in the search bar. How stuff works. And since
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this grammar police. Hey, guys, regular listener. For
Speaker 1: quite some time I finally become angered or inspired enough
Speaker 1: to write in about something I use the sandwich technique
Speaker 1: proposed by Chuck recently. By the way, and I was
Speaker 1: listening to an older episode Does a Body Replace Itself?
Speaker 1: And you guys were talking about emails from the grammar police.
Speaker 1: Grammar only has strict rules to those who decided that
Speaker 1: it needed strict rules. As a society, we have a
Speaker 1: rather dramatic ebb and flow of grammar rules. There's no
Speaker 1: one entity decide to decide upon the rules, and therefore
Speaker 1: there's no real right or wrong. You can almost consider
Speaker 1: it like a fashion in a way. We can all
Speaker 1: generally agree that double negatives are wrong, much like we
Speaker 1: can all agree that socks and sandals are wrong, and
Speaker 1: yet some will still use them or wear them without
Speaker 1: a problem, as long as we can understand each other
Speaker 1: and the quote incorrect unquote. Grammar does not take away
Speaker 1: from the meaning of your words, and it should not matter.
Speaker 1: There are different times in which proper grammar is necessary
Speaker 1: and scrutinized, and then there are times when it frankly
Speaker 1: does not matter. Uh. There is a huge debate in
Speaker 1: the grammar world. UH, the few but mighty, she points out,
Speaker 1: about whether we should be prescriptivists or descriptivists when it
Speaker 1: comes to the rules of grammar. Uh, it's a constantly
Speaker 1: evolving topic and arguably grammar is a constantly evolving entity.
Speaker 1: I just thought i'd share my thoughts and hopes that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get down on yourselves from the grammar police.
Speaker 1: And yes, feel free to pick apart my email for
Speaker 1: grammar errors. Happy face. That is from Colleen Zaker, an
Speaker 1: English teacher and grammar enthusiasts. Thanks a lot, Colleen, We
Speaker 1: appreciate that big time. We always love to hear support
Speaker 1: from people who are like, don't listen to the haters. Yeah. Ah.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
Speaker 1: Colleen did, is it Colleen? Sure? Uh? Who cares? Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It goes either way or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said, you can call me whatever. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to, uh, get in touch with us, like Cauliflower did,
Speaker 1: you can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at house Stiff First dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us over at home on the web. Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot
Speaker 1: com