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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Do It Yourself
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Ok, buckle up, it's time for an essay.
Firstly, it sounds like your burner, like mine, doesn't like too much timber inside of it on the first burn of the day.
Remember that everything is 'cold'. Your flue, the fire bricks, the burner. And all that needs to get warmed asap and will 'steal' that heat from the fire. Which will make the flames choke, especially when compared with a hot burner.
Plus if you have to turn the log to keep it burning then you don't have enough heat (embers, or flames) under it to keep it on fire.
And that's even if it's not the first fire of the day.
The only time I need to mess with a log is if they have fallen against the glass.
I try to keep about an inch of ash in the firebox for insulation. And try to keep an inch of embers running so the logs get hot enough to burn.
We tried numerous ways of starting fires.
Bottom up.
Logs in an arrow shape facing to the back of the burner with kindling at the front.
Logs like a teepee, with kindling under it.
Logs as a proper V shape with kindling under and over.
But every time it would struggle and/or smoke a lot.
Now, like I said, we just use kindling with the top down method. We put in 4 inch sized firelighters under the top piece of kindling and fire it up. 99 percent of the time it'll start no problems, and far less smoke.
If we put anything other than kindling in it will be very small logs, almost branches sized, nothing more.
Once the fire is going with a decent amount of embers then we can chuck the logs in but leave the air controls open and, again, 99 percent of the time it'll catch. Then we will just shut the controls a bit later as needed.
You need 3 things to start and keep a fire going: ignition(fire). Fuel. Oxygen(air).
Too much, or too little, will cause it to go boom. Go out. Or smoke.
Having the correct amounts of each will, usually, mean you have a good fire.
You want to eliminate as much smoke as possible. It'll cause creosote, etc, and if that catches ignites you'll have a chimney fire. Which, obviously, is bad.
Then there's the logs. If they aren't 'dry' you'll also struggle to keep things burning because you are adding another element (sap, water) to it all.
The 'wetter' the wood the more air you'll need to keep the same sized log on fire.
If you haven't got a moisture tester for timber then you defo should get one. Anything under 20% is great.
Logs. We burn anything. Hard, soft. It doesn't matter. As long as it is dry it burns.
If we have hardwood we'll leave that until the fire is going. We'll start with kindling, then a few softwood then hardwood.
If the fire is hot enough it won't smoke.
I've got to go to work. Any questions then just ask
Hi, apologies for the delay in replying and thanks for the advice - I've been following it this weekend after getting some more logs.
So far it's working well - I'm on top-down (Scandinavian) method - gets a really nice fire going quick and heats up the flue pretty quickly too. Your tip on getting a moisture tester: I'm gonna follow up soon when I get paid. I get that it's going to be pretty useful.
I got the two controls mixed up: left being main air vent (which I now keep open until the fire gets red hot) and the right (which I used to keep closed all the time) and now leave open. So, it's running pretty nice now, my next challenge is keeping it going! I got some complaints that the room was going cold so I'm not sure if leaving the logs to go to embers was leaving it too late before putting more logs on.
Again, thanks for the heads up, this is a learning curve for us, but I really appreciate the help.