Cold Start... After Good Ignition, Cracked or Closed?

Being an after-work burner, I have to cold start the stove on any day other than the weekend. I always leave my door cracked for about 2-5 minutes until I get substantial ignition, but then I over-analyze and wonder if the stove heats quicker with the door closed and lazier flames, or the door cracked which leads to a more aggressive, wind-blown flame. I would think the cracked door and wind blown flame would be hotter, but the door closed would retain heat from a lazier flame better than an open door.

It's hard to nail down, because I have such a hodge-podge collection of wood species in my stack.

I guess the biggest problem is that when starting a cold stove, sometimes you have nothing better to do than think about things like this =)

When my son comes and my wife stops working, maybe I can convince her to just keep the thing running while I'm at work. That, or a 24hr burn time from a BK Princess is sounding more and more appealing..........

Thanks for the responses. I guess the ideal situation would be I could light the supercedar, close the door and come back in a few minutes. I always set my wristwatch countdown timer before leaving our stove with the damper open, and of course never leave it with the door open.

Ultimately, the end-run on this question is one of politeness. I live on the South side of our neighborhood, and our wind is constantly from the South. During startup I feel bad as I see a plume of smoke roll off our chimney and down into the neighboorhood. To my knowledge, I am the only woodburner in our neighborhood of 20 houses.

I just want smoke combustion as soon as possible. I've never had a complaint and would like to keep it that way. I guess one way I could improve would be to light smaller warm up fires; I usually just pack the stove full of splits, a bit of kindling and a half or quarter supercedar.

Thanks Dennis. That is probably the best advice of all. I'll make sure my future kindling/warm up load is mostly pine or dry pine lumber scraps.

My current wood menu includes pine, fir, cedar, maple, cherry, plum, and homefire logs for overnight burns.