Burning Tree

For the two previous Christmas seasons we have had real Christmas trees. We have purchased a fake tree for this year and hopefully that tree will serve for many years to come. Two years ago the real tree had dried out fairly early - a couple of weeks before Christmas. It was in the house for a few weeks after Christmas and then I took it out in the garden to burn it. That was amazing! It went so fast and the flames were at least 15' above the tree. I regretted that I did not photograph or videotape the event.

Last year we also had a real tree, but were able to keep it moist through the Christmas season. After that I took it out and put it in the shed. Several months later I took it out to burn, but was disappointed. I had even set up the video camera this time. I think what happened was that this tree was out in the higher humidity air after it had warmed up and snow started to melt where the previous year the tree was in the dry inside air during the cold part of the winter when the furnace ran fairly often.

I had gotten the idea from the web site of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). They have a page about fire safety for the "holidays." I wonder which holiday they mean? Memorial Day? It's almost funny - to avoid saying "Christmas trees" they use the term "trees used indoors for the holidays." Anyway, on that page they have a video of a test burn of a Christmas tree inside a fake living room. At the time I first saw the video I had no idea it would burn so fast and consume the room so quickly. With a Christmas tree fire like that you really don't have much time.

I love the Discovery show "MythBusters." A while back they did a section on Christmas tree fires. Here is the episode language from the web site: "Is it really true that leaving some Christmas lights on your tree overnight could cause it to heat up so much that the tree bursts into a ball of flame?" Well, they basically ended up proving that a fire will not start, even with a very dry tree, from hot lights. They had to present some ignition source like spark or flame, and that ignition source could occur in the home from a damaged or overloaded cord. Their final test to try to induce a fire with lights was to load an extremely dry tree (so dry it was brown) with hundreds of the clear larger bulbs like C7 or C9 bulbs. They stood a distance back, turned on the lights, and used an infrared meter, I think, to check the temperature of the lights/tree. I believe the temperature went up to over 200 deg. and stayed there; and they were still not able to ignite the dry tree. Pretty interesting stuff.

Here is the NIST video. In this video they introduced flame to the dry tree with a propane torch. My tree that first year burned pretty much the same as this one. They were not able to light up a moist, green tree with the torch, or if a section did burn it went out when they removed the torch.