OK, obviously this question has been asked many times, but I can't seem to find it. Specifically, I'd like know:
1) Do you add splits right when you start the fire, or light kindling, get a good bed, then add? Depends . . . if you do a top-down style fire where the bigger splits are on the bottom you should end up with a nice bed of coals without having to add more splits to the fire . . . one reason I like this style of fire setting. If you do a traditional type of fire (teepee or log cabin) you might have to add a split or two and babysit the fire a little more closely.
2) When do I shut the damper down? What am I looking for to know that it's burning properly? Presumable a closed damper=cooler fire, so do I want my room up to be up to temp before shutting it? Again . . . it depends. This is where I tend to use my flue thermometer . . . but some folks use their stove thermometer. When the thermometer reaches X degrees (based on your own stove and set up -- for me this is around 450-500 degrees on my Condar probe thermometer) I start shutting down the air . . . and if the secondaries fire off right away and the fire continues to burn nicely I'll shut it a bit more . . . until either the control is all the way shut or close to being shut . . . other folks shut down the air when their stove reaches X degrees . . . or they'll wait X amount of minutes . . . knowing when to start closing the air is something many of us learn after using our stoves for awhile.
You'll know things are working out when you have good secondary action, clean glass and the heat really starts pumping out of the stove (plus my wife says the pinging sounds she hears is the sound of "heat") . . . if your fire starts to smolder, the glass starts to blacken, etc. then you have shut the air too much or too early . . . open up the air and try again in a few minutes. Incidentally, you are wrong -- a closed damper results in a hotter fire as it tends to create the secondary burn -- when the stove burns off the combustible material in the smoke -- this is where the real heat starts to pour out of the stove.
3) Any tips to reloading? I seem to remember putting new wood towards the back, since the air flows in that direction. Best tip I can think of is to not reload too early or too late . . . if you reload too early you can end up with the stove going thermo-nuclear on you at worse and way too much heat pouring out of the stove and at best you have excessive amounts of coals building up so it makes it hard to fill the firebox . . . reload too late and it will take too long to get the fire back up and cruising along . . . for me personally . . . I like to reload when the coals are the size of oranges or grapefruits . . . it's what works for me. Also if doing an overnight burn I tend to place a couple smaller splits on the bottom to allow the fire to catch . . . and the rest are larger rounds or splits to give me a longer burn.
4) I keep reading about how I want a smaller, hotter fire. At what point can I just fill the firebox? When you really, truly need the heat . . . then you fill the firebox . . . and what I mean by this is if you're looking at cold temps and these temps are going to hang around for awhile . . . in other words, do a small, hot fire if you just need to take the chill out of the air on a Fall evening or damp, chilly Saturday . . . but when the temps dip down into the 30s and are forecast to stay there all day then you may want to try loading the firebox . . . and even then you may not want to reload the firebox too soon . . . perhaps the easiest answer to this question is in middle of the winter when it's wicked cold outside . . . then you'll want to load the firebox.
