Q&A Apartment Fireplace

Question:

After perusing your site (a valuable resource indeed!) I was unable to find an answer to the question that has been bothering me for quite awhile now... Here goes:

We live in an apartment in Virginia which does indeed have a fireplace. The problem is, I cant get 'real' wood to burn in it! I can put all sorts of kindling under the logs, etc., but they just sit there and smolder. However, the 'fake' logs, DuraFlame et al, work fine. After having spent last winter using DuraFlame logs, we decided to make the landlords sweep the chimney, thinking that it wasn't providing enough air flow to keep the O2 around the log. That didn't help.

Do you have any ideas as to why/what I can do to get a REAL crackling, hot fire? I'd appreciate it!



Answer:

#1 Warm the chimney - use a piece of newspaper up the flue.
#2 Make sure the wood is dry
#3 Crisscross the Kindling so there is lots of air between it
#4 Set the whole fire before you light it
#5 Read starting and tending a fire at http://hearth.com/what/specific.html