A 7 a.m. start Sunday helped firefighters from Woolwich and other towns train mostly before the heat of the day, as they burned a house and storage building at 18 Phipps Point Road.

Watching as work continued winding down around 11 a.m., owner Allison Gray of Brunswick and husband Jeremy said they saved money clearing the lot and were glad to help so many firefighters get training. “I think that’s great. We’re hearing good things from all of them,” Allison said.

“It’s the best of the best, real world training we can get,” Woolwich Fire Chief Michael Demers said. “It’s a real structure, it holds the heat like a structure, and it gives us all the real world stuff that we would encounter on a typical fire that we would go to.” About 30 Woolwich, Dresden, West Bath and Arrowsic firefighters took part, getting interior firefighting, search and rescue, ventilation, pump operations and water shuttle training, he said. They burned the two-story, three-bedroom wood-framed home and the other building.

“Great training,” West Bath firefighter Ben Huebler said. “We appreciate the invite and being able to train with these guys.”

As the temperature climbed over the morning, the inside training ended, Demers said, sitting as he and others cooled off. “We probably could have trained a little more and a little longer, but it got hot, so we cut it back and did some outside training instead of keep going in. We didn’t want to make anybody sick or ... hurt, because it was pretty hot.”

Allison Gray recalled being around her high school or college years when she helped make holes there for fence posts for horses from her great aunt Margaret Gardiner’s Kennebec Morgan horse farm down the road. Families with ties to the farm lived at 18 Phipps Point Road over the years and then it had tenants, who bought their own home last summer, Gray said.

Gardiner died in February at 98. The Grays got 18 Phipps Point Road and plan to keep it in the family. “I just have such fond memories,” Allison said. “And we’re just ready for this new chapter, to put something here that’ll suit us. We’re part of the Gardiner family, so we are here to stay.”