Here's a tip and trick to help light the fire in your wood stove.
Lighting your wood stove
First Safety
Before you start to light the fire in a wood stove make sure the stove is not in high efficiency mode. My Vermont Casting's Resolute Acclaim stove has a lever on the right hand side toward the rear which opens a damper in the stove. Actually there is a removable handle for this lever, so the handle never gets too hot to handle, ha ha. This damper must be open before you try to start the fire!
Also my stove has a clean out slider on the lower left that must be set to a closed condition. For my stove this slider is pulled toward the operator. And finally a draft damper lever at the bottom which must be all the way to the right for safe effective starting. If you're renting or just visiting a friends home please check all these things before you start a fire in a wood stove!
Stack up your kindling and wood.
I cheat and use Seymour Fire Blox. They burn clean and don't smell; no black smoke. They're the only clean burning starters I've seen. Fatwood really smells and burns black I wouldn't use it in my stove. If your stove has a catalytic converter make sure you check whether its safe to use any of these products. Of course the standard is a little newspaper, small kindling, then smaller to larger pieces of wood.
The Blox now seem to be sold by Rutland. They're called Rutland Safe-Lite fire starters and are available through Ace Hardware at a fair price. I was first exposed to these fire starters just outside of Rutland at Killington Ski Area. These starters burn very clean and are easier to light than fatwood.
Please order your bulk safe light fire starters through this link and support BobsHowTo at no extra cost to you and a good price from Ace.
Also at Amazon:
Safe Lite Igniters
These clean burning starters are also known as Seymour Fire Blox.
Thanks!
Establish the draft; more safety
For a wood stove or a fireplace you must make sure you have a draft up the flue pipe or chimney. On cold days the air may actually flow down your flue pipe, so light up a piece of newspaper and hold it inside your stove near the exhaust or flue pipe until the warm air flows up the pipe. If you don't do this, smoke may billow into the room. Not a big problem for a wood stove, you just close the door, but then the fire may go out! I'm lucky my stove almost always has a small draft established.
Here's the secret trick!
Leave the stove door cracked after you start your fire. Probably for a least ten minutes until the fire is well established, then close the door! Of course you should supervise this to make sure nothing
flies out of
your stove and starts a fire in your home! This trick made all the difference for me. My stove owners manual does not mention this trick. I add now, 1/19/2005, leaving the door just ajar, not closed, but with the door closed to the point the latch is in contact creates a swirl that
truly helps light the fire. As the draft
increases the door will probably "suck" itself into this position anyway. In addition I've been putting the fire starters in the front of the stove so they are exposed to this swirling air. This can really accelerate fire starting.
If you need a firewood rack check out my "How To" build a very low cost strong modular wooden firewood rack introduction.
Another warning
With very well seasoned wood it may be possible for you to "over fire" your woodstove. The fire is too hot. One obvious sign, that you should never let happen, is the stove begins to glow. Close the door and even reduce the draft, don't let your stove get to hot!
If your fire begins to die, or you let it burn down.
Again you can add some wood and just crack the door while you supervise the stove. The induced air swirl will slowly increase as the heat increases your chimney draft. Even a minute of this can resuscitate a fire enough that you can close the door and it will take care of itself.
Kindling
When my firewood is delivered I've got to stack it up. But you know what's left over on the ground, all sorts of good kindling. All that left over bark and wood chips are great for starting fires, so rake them up and put them in a box of some kind.
More info from Rutland but cheaper at Ace. And cheapest at Amazon!
Of course they're not as nice as my Firewood Rack!
Hope this helped,
Bob
Topic: Here's a tip and trick to help light the fire in your wood stove.