Starting a Stove Fire

[Egon]

Fat pine spills and fat pine kindling work well for starting a fire.

 

[Snobdds]

When I snowmobile into the cabin in the winter, the place is as cold as the outside temp, so I need a fire fast. I have a pail of ceder wood shavings and a little bottle of kerosene. I fill a little metal can with wood shavings and pour some kerosene on it. Then I spread it in the stove, put some pieces of fat wood on and light it up. No matter how cold it is, and it gets well below freezing, the draft starts up and the fire is roaring in 5 minutes.

 

[deezler]

3-4 sheets of newspaper and a few small sticks of kindling or cut-up lumber scraps, gets my cold woodstove going easily every time. Definitely need to assemble the logs with the right amount of air space to make the "blast furnace" setup someone else mentioned. Also known as the "log-cabin", with any old leftover coals pushed to the inside since they light up quick.

An easy source of kindling is just to look on the ground after a day of running the log splitter, there's great flakes and strips all over. I also typically take all my scrap 2x4 and other non-treated lumber bits over to my miter saw and cut them into ~1x3" chunks, those work great since they are already kiln dried.

 

[gstrom99]

I have an Extech MO50 about $44 on eBay. It has 2 pins and digital display and seems well built. Parent company is FLIR, well known. You can spend about as much as you want on a moisture meter but I do not see doing that. $44 gets you above the junk but below wasting your money. The outside of a piece of wood will be dryer than the inside but is still a good indicator. If the outside is over 18% (my cutoff) the inside generally is too wet to burn without creating creosote. Ideally you would do a fresh spilt of a large piece and test the center and it should be under 20%.

Our exterior air moisture stays above 80% all winter which lets Doug Fir (our most common wood) stabilize at around 14 to 18% moisture after 2 years under cover. Split at the start of the 2 years, not at the end. Wood dries much better split.

Moisture Meters | Extech Instruments

I've never been able to figure out how our firewood is supposed to dry out to the 15 - 20% moisture content target, when the humidity levels stay 40 - 80%.
Someone want to explain the physics to me?

 

[4570Man]

I've never been able to figure out how our firewood is supposed to dry out to the 15 - 20% moisture content target, when the humidity levels stay 40 - 80%.
Someone want to explain the physics to me?

If you hung up wet laundry would it dry or would it stay 80 percent wet?

 

[ericm979]

I've never been able to figure out how our firewood is supposed to dry out to the 15 - 20% moisture content target, when the humidity levels stay 40 - 80%.
Someone want to explain the physics to me?

The two humidity measurements are not comparable. The wood one is straightforward- 20% humidity means 20% of the weight is water. The normal value used for air humidity is "relative humidity". 80% relative humidity does not mean the air is 80% water by weight. We'd probably have a hard time breathing that. Instead, 100% relative humidity means the air is saturated with as much water vapor as it will hold. That value depends on the temperature and air pressure. But it's less than the absolute humidity scale used for wood.

Here's a table showing the wood equilibrium humidity at different air humidities: Wood Equilibrium Moisture Content Table And Calculator

 

[gstrom99]

Thanks. That's the response I needed...

 

[kco]

I don't have a wood stove but we do use a wood furnace to heat our home.

My favourite starter is birch bark. I have several large contractor garbage bags of it that I store on top of the wood piles, which are all under roofs. I just go through one garbage bag per year. If you cut birch with the sap in it and don't buck it up it will start to rot within a few months. After felling I always run the chain saw the length of the log to open the bark. The bark pretty well peels itself, at least half way around the tree. So when bucking up the logs you just have to peel it the rest of the way by hand. It is easy to rip those pieces into strips by hand. I put them in bags and they dry over a few years. I transfer the bark to the furnace room in a 5 gallon bucket which will last 2 weeks for starting fires.

As others have mentioned, I lay two small firewood sticks parallel and put the birch strip fire starter in between. Then a few sticks of kindling straddling the two parallel sticks and light the birch bark with a propane torch. The birch bark is easy to light and burns hot and fast very similar to diesel oil.

My favourite kindling is dry cedar about the thickness of my little finger. It catches fire easily and burns quickly and hot. It's also very easy to split.

 

[Diggin It]

Though I've used different methods based on what I have near the stove at the moment, I find one of best to be twigs and sticks I have to pick up from around the yard. Dried Red Oak twigs work wonders.

 

[JerryK]

Up here in Michigan, we were log'd back in the 1800's. Around 1871 the big mess they left caught fire and burned across the state. The white pine stumps left from the logging and the big fire can still be found here and there in the state. They are full of pitch and when split, make excellent kindling. Just like they are soaked in diesel.

 

[Bocephous]

I only start a couple of fires a year. Once my stove is going, I tend to keep it going, usually from the end of October or beginning of November until beginning or middle of April.

I crumble newspaper, which is the first layer.

Chips left over from splitting wood goes on next, followed by small splits, and a couple of middle sized split pieces.

I sprinkle kerosene or diesel over the top of everything, open the ash clean out door (Harman Mark III) and light it up. You can watch the temp rise on the mid pipe thermometer and I get a strong draw up the chimney.

After it's established I close the door, leaving the damper open, and adjust the damper down over the next hour or so while I feed the fire. Soon I have a nice coal bed and I can burn normally.

I re-establish in the morning with splits on the coal bed and an open damper, both on the ash door and the manual pipe damper.

 

[Jstpssng]

Pine cones also make great fire starters.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Pine cones also make great fire starters.

They sure do. A few years ago, a fire started by a faulty exhaust system across the canyon from me caught pine trees on fire. The lit cones from those trees rolled down into the canyon, and we lost two homes to the flames. Shortly after that, the embers landed on this side of the canyon, and I sat up all night with a fire crew waiting it to come for my home. I got lucky when the fire stubbed out when it hit a bench of rock, and it never got here. I wasn't so lucky with the Camp Fire, whose flames toasted my parcel. Only firesafe construction and a 30' perimeter of concrete, gravel, and decomposed granite saved the house that time, as there were no firefighters on hand and I evacuated.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Just eying the paper grocery bags we are getting instead of plastic. Probably good fire starters.

 

[rockinmywaypa]

I personally found, that at times the propane torch is not enough to get the SS liner heated up to get a draft started. I have tried. So I am unconvinced, that for my installation, a bulb would work. Best option is just to use something what burns (guaranteed) and with little smoke. I actually used to love the gell type fire starter, but have resisted spending the money. Hate when you spend money to save money. But opening all the doors and windows in the middle of winter to try and get rid of the smoke and not have the smell get into the furnishings, isn't good either, never mind uncomfortable.

have been there, part of the reason I put in the water heating unit outdoors. Now I can set a skid of wood right beside it indoors too.

 

[fatjay]

Amazon.com : Lightning Nuggets N1SEB Super Economy Box Fire Starter 1, Count, Tan : Fire Starters : Garden & Outdoor

Bought a box of those 3 years ago. Still have about half a box left. I burn wood bricks now, similiar to pellets but you can burn them in a regular stove. Real easy, put 2 bricks going back, 2 bricks on top of those going sideways, one of those fire starter things under it, and light with the propane torch. Instant fire. No mess and I only need to clean my stove out once a week at most.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Just started a stove fire.

Had some neat organic packaging material, looked like plane shavings which caught well, but fleeting. The Floor remnants from my Lady Friends house, which look like plywood with a shiny nice coating, doesn't really burn well for kindling. But draft conditions are favourable, so got it going without hardly a puff of smoke inside.

Nice to have a fire going when there are whiteouts outside. -15c tonight.

 

[FTG-05]

Funny how the OP never addressed his main issue: Trying to start wet wood on fire.

Propane torch, firestarters, garbage, kerosene, diesel fuel, lumber rejects. None of those things are necessary to start a fire. Propane torch for five minutes? You gotta be ****ting me. If that's not a sign of wet wood, I don't k now what is.

All you need is well seasoned dry firewood, a couple pieces of paper and a match. Of course, if you're wood stove system isn't designed and built to code per the manufacturer, then that needs to be fixed first. But the symptoms the OP described (won't start, goes out, black glass, smokes etc.): Yep, wet wood.

I start fires almost every day down here in TN. Since we have far more moderate cold weather temps, one fire/day is usually enough (one and done, I rarely have to add additional pieces of wood). Which means I start a brand new fire every morning, when needed.

Fill the wood stove with wood - that's dry (= 2-3 years minimum), put a couple pieces of paper with kindling on top (splitter slash), light it, go make coffee. By the time I'm sipping a cup of joe, the fire is blazing along.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Well, yes and no. The minute this place was finished in 73, with two fireplaces, it became apparent that there was a draft issue. Fingers pointed at too small a flue speced for the heatalator, but the location is a big factor, next to a hillside. Not uncommon at night with outside lighting to see the smoke coming down beside the house.

But yes, the wood situation is rarely a priority and done in Ad Hoc fashion. Most wood burned is just cut down DEAD standing ELM, into three foot logs, throw it on the porch by the front door and that is what we burn in the fireplace that weekend. Very satisfying work and not much handling. Not very efficient for heat, but not much work went into it either. And it doesn't just fall down and rot.

 

[deezler]

But yes, the wood situation is rarely a priority and done in Ad Hoc fashion. Most wood burned is just cut down DEAD standing ELM, into three foot logs, throw it on the porch by the front door and that is what we burn in the fireplace that weekend. Very satisfying work and not much handling. Not very efficient for heat, but not much work went into it either. And it doesn't just fall down and rot.

C'mon, man. Just cut it up like that a year ahead of time (or at least a month or two), and it will burn way better (cleaner, hotter, etc). Dry wood will give you MORE BTUs, instead of wasting them to evaporate moisture out of the wood. And the planet's atmosphere does not need any more VOCs and particulates that your crappy, unseasoned wood is pumping out the chimney. Just think ahead a tiny bit and your results will improve dramatically.