Burning Fan
May. 16th, 2020 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeWe once again had ideal conditions for doing another debris burn: almost no wind at all, cool temperatures, and overcast to keep the sun from baking us.
Last week I spent a couple of hours after work each day clearing the mountain of tumbleweeds that had accumulated along the fence line and hauling them 50 m to the other end of the property where it was safe to burn.
I also cut back some of these trees so that I could rake a large accumulation (10 or 20 cm deep in places) of leaves and other organic debris back from the fence.
In the foreground is the regulation-size main burn pile, which is mostly the smashed-down tumbleweeds. Beyond it is a larger pile of cut brush and leaf debris. The plan was to get the smaller fire going and as it burned down to feed debris from the larger pile into it. The trees along the fence line in the distance are from the previous two pictures. Also note that we're not technically on our own property here, but the vacant lot adjacent to our house on the right side of the fence. However, as whoever owns this lot has done nothing for years to abate the brush nuisance, we take it upon ourselves to defend our property from wildfire danger.
With the pile ready to go, Lisa (who was up much earlier than me) staged the hoses and garden tools while I got a cup of coffee, and we were ready to do some burning.
Lisa used the propane weed burning torch to set the pile ablaze. You'll see it's on the same spot at the previous burns. This is just about the only safe space we've found to do this sort of thing, as we don't want to be near other burnable things.
Initially we got a nice hot fire. Hot fires are best: they don't produce any smoke and are less likely to annoy the neighbors.
As we fed more material into the fire from the larger "fuel pile," we encountered a problem: the leaves and branches were not as dry as the tumbleweeds and tended to smoulder rather than burn. Lisa worked to keep moving the fire around to keep air flowing into the burn area.
After an hour or so, even after I brought in more dry tumbleweeds to stoke up the fire, we admitted that we weren't going to get it all done today, so we started to ramp it down. Lisa played the propane torch over the remains of the pile to try and get it to heat up and burn the remaining bits.
If we didn't work on either encouraging it or putting it out completely, a pile like this could have slowly burned for hours, but that's annoying and potentially hazardous. Big fires have happened because people left small fires like this unattended. We did what we could to get the rest of this to burn.
This stage might be even more dangerous. This fire looks on the surface that it's out, but it's still quite hot, and had we put more dry fuel onto it (or had something blown into the pile), it probably would have ignited. Lisa and I raked the coals flat and Lisa got the garden hose and sprayer.
This looks like smoke, but it's mostly steam from right after Lisa spayed a bunch of water mist over the pile. That shows you how hot it still was.
Multiple rounds of raking and ash-stirring produced a satisfactorily mushy pile of mud ash I could handle with my bare hands. I washed myself and the garden tools and Lisa and I drained the hoses and put them away.
We may have managed to dispose of about half the total volume of lawn debris we had piled up. There are two weekends left before burn season ends on May 31, so we need to plan for finishing the job.
I spread out the pile of leaves and branches to try and get it to dry out over the coming week. I plan to go out each day and stir it around so that the sun and wind can work on it and it will be dry enough to burn next weekend without turning into a smoky mess.
We wish the fire district would allow us to use a burn barrel. It would be much easier because we could put it up on rocks with holes around the bottom edge of the barrel. That would allow air to feed into the bottom of the fire and result in a much hotter and more efficient burn.
As it happens, we got done at a good time, as the overcast was fading and so was Lisa. She'd fallen against a corner brick wall on the property while bringing hoses out for setup, and was in a fair bit of pain by the time we were done, so she needed to take the rest of the day off. I'm glad we were able to work together on this, though, because I think it's much safer to do this with two people than one.
Last week I spent a couple of hours after work each day clearing the mountain of tumbleweeds that had accumulated along the fence line and hauling them 50 m to the other end of the property where it was safe to burn.
I also cut back some of these trees so that I could rake a large accumulation (10 or 20 cm deep in places) of leaves and other organic debris back from the fence.
In the foreground is the regulation-size main burn pile, which is mostly the smashed-down tumbleweeds. Beyond it is a larger pile of cut brush and leaf debris. The plan was to get the smaller fire going and as it burned down to feed debris from the larger pile into it. The trees along the fence line in the distance are from the previous two pictures. Also note that we're not technically on our own property here, but the vacant lot adjacent to our house on the right side of the fence. However, as whoever owns this lot has done nothing for years to abate the brush nuisance, we take it upon ourselves to defend our property from wildfire danger.
With the pile ready to go, Lisa (who was up much earlier than me) staged the hoses and garden tools while I got a cup of coffee, and we were ready to do some burning.
Lisa used the propane weed burning torch to set the pile ablaze. You'll see it's on the same spot at the previous burns. This is just about the only safe space we've found to do this sort of thing, as we don't want to be near other burnable things.
Initially we got a nice hot fire. Hot fires are best: they don't produce any smoke and are less likely to annoy the neighbors.
As we fed more material into the fire from the larger "fuel pile," we encountered a problem: the leaves and branches were not as dry as the tumbleweeds and tended to smoulder rather than burn. Lisa worked to keep moving the fire around to keep air flowing into the burn area.
After an hour or so, even after I brought in more dry tumbleweeds to stoke up the fire, we admitted that we weren't going to get it all done today, so we started to ramp it down. Lisa played the propane torch over the remains of the pile to try and get it to heat up and burn the remaining bits.
If we didn't work on either encouraging it or putting it out completely, a pile like this could have slowly burned for hours, but that's annoying and potentially hazardous. Big fires have happened because people left small fires like this unattended. We did what we could to get the rest of this to burn.
This stage might be even more dangerous. This fire looks on the surface that it's out, but it's still quite hot, and had we put more dry fuel onto it (or had something blown into the pile), it probably would have ignited. Lisa and I raked the coals flat and Lisa got the garden hose and sprayer.
This looks like smoke, but it's mostly steam from right after Lisa spayed a bunch of water mist over the pile. That shows you how hot it still was.
Multiple rounds of raking and ash-stirring produced a satisfactorily mushy pile of mud ash I could handle with my bare hands. I washed myself and the garden tools and Lisa and I drained the hoses and put them away.
We may have managed to dispose of about half the total volume of lawn debris we had piled up. There are two weekends left before burn season ends on May 31, so we need to plan for finishing the job.
I spread out the pile of leaves and branches to try and get it to dry out over the coming week. I plan to go out each day and stir it around so that the sun and wind can work on it and it will be dry enough to burn next weekend without turning into a smoky mess.
We wish the fire district would allow us to use a burn barrel. It would be much easier because we could put it up on rocks with holes around the bottom edge of the barrel. That would allow air to feed into the bottom of the fire and result in a much hotter and more efficient burn.
As it happens, we got done at a good time, as the overcast was fading and so was Lisa. She'd fallen against a corner brick wall on the property while bringing hoses out for setup, and was in a fair bit of pain by the time we were done, so she needed to take the rest of the day off. I'm glad we were able to work together on this, though, because I think it's much safer to do this with two people than one.
