Lighting Your Stove!

Lighting Your Stove

To successfully light your stove you require 3 things.

1. Yesterday’s newspaper

Newspaper is ideal for lighting fires as it burns quickly and with a high temperature, it is much better that magazines which often have a shiny coating which renders them difficult to light and sometimes almost impossible to fully burn. Always store the newspaper you are going to use to light your fire somewhere warm and dry, as it readily soaks up moisture even from the air. Newspaper stored in a garage or shed will have a much higher moisture content and will therefore be more difficult to light. 

2. Dry kindling

The key word here is dry! As we are all aware water is the enemy of fire and while many people believe that all wood will burn the truth is that green wood (freshly cut) or wet wood (wood which was once dry and has been left uncovered out in the rain or in a damp atmosphere) can have a significant amount of water in them. The ideal kindling will be small pieces of air or kiln dried soft wood with a moisture content of 20% or lower.

3. Fuel

If your stove is a wood-burner then as suggested by the name you will be burning wood based fuels only; Hardwood or softwood logs or wood briquettes.   A multi-fuel stove can burn all of the above as well asAnthracite, Preformed smokeless fuel, peat and peat briquettes.

NB:  The burning of ordinary bitumous house coal should be avoided on stoves and other closed appliances.

Lighting your stove.

Now that we have all our ingredients we can begin to build a fire.

1. Lay a bed of loosely scrunched newspaper on the base of your stove.

2. Arrange some dry kindling in a crosshatch pattern on top of your bed of newspaper.

3. Light the newspaper in 3 or 4 places working from back to front.

 4. Put all air controls in fully open position and close stove door completely or if draw is limited leave door slightly ajar and allow kindling to burn until fully alight and blackened.

 5. You should now add a small amount of fuel of your choice to the burning bed of kindling care should be taken at this point to arrange fuel in such a way as to allow air to pass easily through the fuel. For example a tightly packed bunch of small logs will behave more like one large log and will take much longer to become an established fire.

6. Leave all air controls in fully open position and close stove door completely or if draw is limited leave door slightly ajar and allow fuel to burn until fully alight and blackened. You should then fully close the door and set the air controls for your desired burn rate.

7. You may now top up the fire box with a full load of fuel.  Again allow the fuel to become fully alight, then fully close the door, setting the air controls to your desired burn rate.  Refuelling intervals vary depending on the burn rate and fuel quality.

Sit back relax and enjoy the warmth and beauty of a real fire…

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