OT...Tip on Lighting wood stoves....

For any of you guys and gals who may be new (or not) to using wood ovens. After several years of using our wood stove and wood oven, whilst we have never had problems, we have found we have been lighting them all wrong.

Logically you would think that since heat rises you would light from the bottom. i.e. firelighter, gas poker. hot air blower... whatever ! kindling above that, larger sticks and once all that is going adding bigger logs.
That, however, means having to keep an eye on it and add the logs as needed until it is established. It also means that adding large logs at the top , especially if they are not absolutely bone dry, causes them to smoke until the gases given off as they heat up and until they reach flashpoint. Even with our stoves having 'airwash the glass used to get dirty.

Now, whilst they say 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks', we very recently dicovered that Sscandinavians use the 'Top down' method... ( Oi! Mr Dawson,... none of your double entendres here please)

Anyway, you put LARGE logs in first at the BOTTOM on the fire grate making sure there is a small air gap between them . You then lay small/ medium size logs/sticks on top of them and put firelighter and kindling at the very top.

What happens is that the kindling burns and that ignites the medium size sticks below both of which allow burning fragments to drop onto the large logs. All the time the gases being released as the logs heat up are ignited by the burning sticks and kindling meaning your glass stays cleaner (and more importantly there is less soot /unburnt particle build up in the flue reducing the risk of chimney fires).

The main advantage is that you can light it and leave it (obviously you just need to check it from time to time) but you don't have to do anything with it - adding more logs for anything up to an hour (depending on the size of your wood burner) except possibly to close the dampers and airflow regulators if it is really well established.

Also note wood burns better if air enters from above not from underneath, whereas coke /coal on multifuel burners burn better if the air enters from below . Furthemore, some burners are more efficient and economical to run if fully loaded whilst some are better fed little and often. The user manual should tell you which is best for your particular stove. Beware using, some scrap wood. Some not all contains preservatives /paint/ primers etc which release toxic gases.

Again if you have just started using wood with the energy crisis make sure you a) get a Carbon Monoxide detector (not just a smoke detector) and ABOVE all since wood stoves draw in air (and quite a lot of it when burning hot) makes sure you have a decent size external air inlet (airbricks) in the same room. If you have gas, by law you should have ventilation anyway but it will be where the gas boiler is. Unless you have a gas fire you may well not have an airvent in your living room. Without it you could end up with a build up of CM (the 'silent killer').

In the words of a long departed poster on this BB... 'hope this helps'.

 

OK! I'll give you that one. Pretty tame for you I must say. I was expecting worse

 

Was going to say you couldn't beat a good warm log. However, I wouldn't like to throw it on the fire .