Carefully examine them and immediately repair or replace any defective part. Don’t burn out chimneys and flues by making an especially hot fire with paper, etc. Main chimneys should be cleaned from roof to cellar. All stovepipes where entering chimneys should be provided with metal collars and rigidly fixed in place. Replace any tile, crock or flimsy flues and chimneys with substantial brick chimneys. Gas stoves or other heaters should have a ventilating flue to carry off the burned gas fumes, which are poisonous. Do not use portable rubber or similar tubing, but connect all gas stoves rigidly and securely with gas pipe. Examine valves and see that they are tight and do not leak. Never permit a stove of any kind to be set up without stone, brick, concrete or metal protection underneath, or near a partition without a metal shield and air space. Never run stovepipes through partitions, or paste paper over flue holes. All types of open fireplaces or stoves, especially where there are children, should be provided with substantial spark screens. Don’t throw waste paper on an open fire unless you watch it more than carefully. Every period of extreme cold results in numerous fires due to forcing the heating apparatus. Keep this in mind next winter. Watch your heater. Keep hoods and pipes of kitchen range free from grease and lint by cleaning with hot water and lye. Do not hang clothes or bags near stoves, or on stovepipes or steam pipes or on electric bulbs. In the case of the recondite furnace whose being we take for granted, the same principles apply as to the stove. For safety, asbestos about the wood and adjacent places makes safety sure, and if safety first doesn’t apply here where does it? It will at least keep the secretive fire below stairs from breaking bounds. Where pipes, flues, etc., pass through woodwork there should be asbestos or metal protection to the wood or else here again we will be victims of a lapse of precaution. Sometimes fires have occurred by the closing of all registers in a house heated by hot air and the unnatural heat left in the furnace overheats pipes, etc., to a dangerous degree. In some homes so heated there are two registers which cannot possibly be closed, and obviates overheating. Inspection of flues to see that deteriorated mortar will not permit the exit of fire to surrounding woodwork will prevent many a fire. Very often where joists and beams rest on chimneys and are not sufficiently insulated against the ravages of faulty construction or wear, they will catch fire slowly but surely.