| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
today my dad and i cleaned our chimny there was soot everywhere our vacum is a old hoover vac it has a 6 foot hose with a 4 foot alluminum extension when we vacumed up the soot after a while we accidently bumped our wood burner and it made a huge spark this happened every minute or so of vacuming you could make a inch long spark or by touching the tube get shocked what is going on here? could some one explain? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 342 Registered: 12-2004 |
Sounds to me like you were lucky you didn't blow the house up. You will want to ground the aluminum tube next time you do this. If it really is soot (and not just ash) a cloud of it in air can be explosive. The spark can set it off. The flexible part of the tube is probably plastic, and a good insulator. As air and dust move past it, they create triboelectric charges, just like in the Van de Graaff generator. The charge will jump to ground in a spark. If you ground the aluminum part, you will prevent the spark. |
