Jotul C550 Rockland questions

Good day!

First I would like to say thank you, I have learned a soo much. I never would have thought there is so much involved with burning.

We got our Rockland installed on Jan 27th and am really enjoying it. I do have a couple of questions.

1: When reloading do you leave some space between the splits so it ignites quickly then start dampening it down or do you pack the splits tight? When leaving space we do not get very long burn times and when packed tight we get a smoke dragon. Not sure which is the proper way to reload this. Obviously we get the secondary burn quicker with spaces.

2: Screw that tightens the wood knob on the handle keeps on loosening up on us. I tighten it but by the end of the day it is loose again. Thinking loctight will not work seeing how to get loctight undone you heat it up.

My only regret is that we did not do this sooner. Never knew about the flush inserts until a buddy told me about them.

Thanks, Norm

Thanks for the replies. Sorry should have mentioned that this is for a reload. No issues with getting a fire started (learned about top down). Sometimes I will rake the coals forward and pack it 3 or 4 splits but get a lot of smoke waiting for it to get going. Other times I will spread the coals out evenly put the splits on and they fire right up when I leave some space between splits or takes a bit when I pack them tight. Just want to make sure we are doing it correctly. This is a east/west reload. Fires right up with north/south again leaving a gap between splits.

Maybe I misinterpreted the Jotul manual "Load the fuel, usually with smaller logs first". What I started doing was throw a little piece in the back with a big thick split in the front and a couple of smaller pieces on top. Makes sense thinking about it now that I was cutting off the air to the other logs. Also explains why they did not burn very good in the back. I just started doing this towards the end of last week and could not figure out why it was smoking. Back to putting the biggies in back.

Do you always put down a couple of n/s splits then load on top? Usually do that the first couple of fires to warm up the house then go to e/w reloads. I do not have very make half rounds so I try and use square splits on the bottom.

Will put some loctight blue on those threads tonight.

Thank you!

I got my cordless circular saw to cut down the pieces for a n/s load. Since I was not really prepared for to get this insert I am using my ex-fireplace wood. I am cutting short lengths now when stacking so I will have them available next season. My wife likes building the fires with n/s on bottom and e/w on top. Have not tried an all n/s load yet but might. It's a little PITA cutting them down but not bad.

I love building fires and have built some pretty big ones with air gaps, thought I read that you are not suppose air gaps between the wood I should know better). Sometimes I read too much at once and cannot absorb it all.

Baby steps.

Ok, it's been a few days. Getting better results having the splits off the bottom. Another question:

Right side of the firebox burns great, left almost goes out when damping down as shown in the photo. Not sure why hoping someone can explain.