Have you checked your chimney recently?

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

A growth in heat pump sales and new generation woodburners had seen a drop in the number of chimney fire callouts across the region this winter but Fire and Emergency New Zealand Napier senior station officer Jamie Nichol said "we continue to get a few".

While the callouts were down on past winters they still cropped up and it came down to a combination of a casual approach to cleaning and using green wood, he said.

And while chimney fires were relatively quickly dealt with, they created a potential risk to ceiling spaces, "which is why people have to ring us and let us deal with it, rather than try and put it out themselves".

Older systems and particularly units which had not been correctly installed had the potential to quickly heat up ceiling spaces and timbers if there was a fire up the chimney flue. Nichol said people using fires needed to get into the habit of having them cleaned annually.

Read more from Hawkes Bay Today here.
Image: Stuff