I built a wood house that I'm rather proud of. I've built a fireplace that seem safe, but I don't want to risk burning my house down. I've seen plenty of tutorials online for making safe fireplaces, but most of them are more than 1 year old, and possibly obsolete. I tried reading the Minecraft Wiki article on fire, but it gets pretty wordy and difficult to understand. Is the fireplace pictured below safe?
View from inside. (The wood planks in the fireplace will be the fuel, and eventually replaced with netherrack):
Up close view. (Fuel has been removed):
Outside view. (4 dirt blocks have been removed to show base of chimney):
3 Answers
To answer your question, I decided to experiment with your build. I tried to replicate your fireplace as accurately as I could, while limiting the size of the structure surrounding it:
I tried to keep the base structure of the fireplace as close to identical as I could.
I first attempted the fire with the wood planks shown in your pictures:
Unfortunately, the wood burned down to nothing, and the fire eventually died. I then tried it with Netherrack.
Everything seemed to be going well. I thought I'd successfully completed the experiment, when suddenly:
EVERYTHING QUICKLY WENT HORRIBLY WRONG!!
The end result to follow:
Alas, my structure (house) was destroyed. I feel I didn't even get to know my creation, for it died within minutes of me setting the fire.
Long story short, NO. The fire will spread to your house.
five wooden blocks were harmed in the making of this answer
EDIT It is worth noting, however, that out of the 4 times I've rebuilt/retested, every time the fire has started at the bushes along the outside of the fireplace.
I would say no From the Wiki
More precisely, a fire block can turn any air block into fire that is adjacent to a flammable block and up to one block downwards, one block sideways (including diagonals), and four blocks upwards.
Also, this answer would suggest not as well.
3I'm not sure what version this was when it was first posted, however, following the wiki, we can identify exactly how fires are started.
Fire will spread over flammable surfaces. [...] This can happen at a distance of up to one block downwards, one block sideways (including diagonals), and four blocks upwards of the original fire block (not the block the fire is on/next to). Therefore if the player is using fire to build a fireplace, caution is needed. Blocks in the way will not prevent fire from igniting blocks above it—so even if you protect your wooden roof with cobblestone between it and the fire, the fire will completely ignore that cobblestone.
To test this, I built a little experiment:
As you can see, both of these are set up within the parameters of the reach of the spread. Needless to say:
