Going on my third year of burning 100% wood with my Tarm Solo 60 (no storage hooked up yet), of course once it is humming along it throws all the heat I need and keeps the house at a toasty 73 degreess no matter how cold it is out.
However, one of my big complaints had always been how long it took me to start getting heat from a cold boiler, usually an hour and a lot of wood to get a completely cold boiler to min 140 degrees, and the some more time to really start throwing heat.
When I built fires, I normally put two medium sized logs in first (one left, one right laying front-to-back), bunches of newspaper in the middle, smaller wood on top of that, a couple of cross pieces and then some more wood arrange front-to-back. I'd leave enough space to light the newspaper - and away in went (top door left open, bottom door left closed tight) - but as I said, it usually took a bare minimum of an hour to get up to temperatures and I always felt like my whole first load of wood got used up before I even got a single bit of heat into the house.
The other day, quite by accident, I built the fire and forgot to put in the newspaper first, so instead I closed the top door, and stuffed the bottom chamber with newspaper and lit it up that way - leaving the bottom door opening and the top closed tight. Much to my amazement, with the bottom door open, and top door closed I now go from a dead-cold boiler (which lives in an unheated space), to 150 degrees in just under 15 minutes - an amazing difference. How could I have been so dense for over two years?
How do you folks start your fire? Do those of you with an upper and lower door leave the top open, or the bottom open?
However, one of my big complaints had always been how long it took me to start getting heat from a cold boiler, usually an hour and a lot of wood to get a completely cold boiler to min 140 degrees, and the some more time to really start throwing heat.
When I built fires, I normally put two medium sized logs in first (one left, one right laying front-to-back), bunches of newspaper in the middle, smaller wood on top of that, a couple of cross pieces and then some more wood arrange front-to-back. I'd leave enough space to light the newspaper - and away in went (top door left open, bottom door left closed tight) - but as I said, it usually took a bare minimum of an hour to get up to temperatures and I always felt like my whole first load of wood got used up before I even got a single bit of heat into the house.
The other day, quite by accident, I built the fire and forgot to put in the newspaper first, so instead I closed the top door, and stuffed the bottom chamber with newspaper and lit it up that way - leaving the bottom door opening and the top closed tight. Much to my amazement, with the bottom door open, and top door closed I now go from a dead-cold boiler (which lives in an unheated space), to 150 degrees in just under 15 minutes - an amazing difference. How could I have been so dense for over two years?
How do you folks start your fire? Do those of you with an upper and lower door leave the top open, or the bottom open?