It's the "in between" that has me stumped!

[soupy1957]

I can start a fire like nobody's business.........but it's that "in between" burn that has me stumped! I wait til I figure it's "ok" to add a log to get things rolling, after building an ember base from the starting wood, and I end up with no flames, and a log or two that has glowing edges.

What'm I doin wrong? Do I need medium size pieces that are not as small as kindling but not as big as regular splits?

Once I GET the fire going good, I just add a log now and then to keep it going, and it burns very well......

-Soupy1957

 

[polaris]

Is your wood fully seasoned? Is your chimney cap partially plugged? Are you opening your draft control fully when you add wood? These are just a couple of things that come to mind off the top of my head. I'm sure others will be along to offer other/better advice.
Joe

 

[karri0n]

Sounds like you need some drier wood, but in the meantime, smaller splits will help.

I would also recommend packing the stove full to the gills rather than throwing one or two on once your coalbed is established. These stoves are best burned in cycles with a full fuel charge, then allowed to burn down to a bed of coals, rinse, lather, repeat.

 

[BrotherBart]

Open the primary air up when you add on top of the coal bed until the new wood is burning well and then turn it down some.

 

[begreen]

More air and drier wood sound like a good prescription. Are you loading the wood recharge North/South or East/West?

 

[savageactor7]

Once I GET the fire going good, I just add a log now and then to keep it going, and it burns very well…...

-Soupy1957

Yup...pretty much that's all we do too.

 

[Battenkiller]

What'm I doin wrong? Do I need medium size pieces that are not as small as kindling but not as big as regular splits?

Absolutely. Wood larger than 3/4" will not support combustion all by itself, no matter how dry it is. It must be in contact with coals or other pieces that are also flaming. Since you have no coals at startup, you need to make sure that each piece is being actively bathed in flames. I suggest getting your startup materials ready to go the night before. I put mine in a coal hod, left a few feet from the stove so they are dry and warm. Figure out what you will need and use it all before you start adding bigger stuff.

Build the fire in stages, with progressively larger pieces added as the fire intensity increases. Use split pieces, not rounds at this point. Splits ignite faster. Be patient. Don't add wood until the previous pieces are fully involved with flames. Leave plenty of space for air, but make sure the fire itself is concentrated in a small area. Make sure you have some degree of height to your fire at startup. Cross-crossing new pieces directly over the flaming center will keep things concentrated and you will also create a mini chimney effect right inside the box.

Once it is blazing away, you can tap it down so the fuel is more compact. Let it sit like that with the air wide open for about 5 minutes, or until you can see it is recovering well. At that point, the fire should be going good enough for you to easily see how big a piece to add and where to add it. Again, leave the air open for about five minutes before shutting it down some. The key to this is how hot the stove is at that point. Don't reduce the air until the stove is fully up to temp (somewhere around 500-600ºF). Shouldn't take more than 20 minutes starting from scratch with dry wood, with no more than about 5 minutes spent actively at the stove. Leaves plenty of time to s***, shower, and shave in between.

 

[CrawfordCentury]

To use a car metaphor - it seems like you might be trying to shift from 2nd gear into overdrive.

I need to start a fire every morning. Crawford Century cookstove throws off a lot of heat but no overnight burns.

Going from kindle to a blaze with dense hardwoods goes like this:

Start off with 4 crumpled sheets of broadsheet newsprint and 6-8 pieces of fine-split pine. As that burns down, another 6 or so smallish pieces get tossed in. Once a good draft is established, I'll load in some bigger pieces of pine or hemlock. I usually get a small base of coals off from this.

From there, I burn some medium sized pieces of either punky hardwood, knotty pine, or low btu species like popple or red maple. After that burns down, I'll toss in a few more sticks of soft maple or birch - or maybe get some ash into the mix. Usually by that point, the kitchen's good and warm from the quick fire and there's a decent bed of coals. So I'll load in some smaller pieces of red oak, beech, or rock maple. Once this load has gone to coal, I can start with my endurance wood - the bigger splits of red oak, beech, black birch, etc.

If I were to try to go from burning the bigger pine pieces to big wedges of oak, the density of the wood would snuff out my nascent blaze.

Moral of the story is that the punky and/or low btu wood that allotta folks turn their noses up at can have an important role to play in getting from the striking of a match to a nice snug home.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

I dunno about that 3/4" wood not supporting burning. From cold I load to the top with full sized pieces, throw in some birch bark up front as a starter and away we go. Just needs some air to start. The more jammed the stove is, the better it starts from cold for me.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Oh- and with a coal bed- shove ash back, and pull the coals forward. Load to the top with full sized splits, and leave the door cracked for a few minutes. The only kindling I ever use is bark that falls off a log I'm bringing in and a fire is established as fast as any other method I've seen or tried.

 

[polaris]

I dunno about that 3/4" wood not supporting burning. From cold I load to the top with full sized pieces, throw in some birch bark up front as a starter and away we go. Just needs some air to start. The more jammed the stove is, the better it starts from cold for me.

Ditto. I rarely start a fire from scratch during the winter months but when I do I use a full load of full size hardwood splits and a 1/4 of a superceader, open the air and in a few minutes it's off to the races.
Joe

 

[karri0n]

+1 on the last two posts. Fill the box completely with hardwoods(DRY hardwoods), put in 1/4 of a starterlogg, light it and leave the primary open. I usually stick the starterlogg chunk right in the middle of the firebox between some logs after I've got it loaded so it's both on top of and under a decent amount of wood. I don't fuss with the build a small fire thing, then continue to build up. To me, that's what you do for outdoor campfires that don't have a chimney causing all that forced air to be pushed to the heart of the fire.

Others who don't have as huge of a draft as my stove often will leave the front door cracked open to get it started.

 

[Dakotas Dad]

What's kindling?

Load it up, light fire starter, open air fully, 20-30 minutes later, air down for cruise. So simple a caveman can do it.

Next year my fire starters will be the SC brand, this year I am running through the remaining starter logs bits left over from the fireplace.

 

[soupy1957]

thanks to all.............it would seem that the popular concensus is that I need to have some good burn to my starter fire, and THEN introduce some "in between" sized splits, before I move toward the BIG stuff.

I DO use a moisture meter to check the wood I'm adding, (although I admit to throwing in some logs now and then without checking them), and I try to place all my wood (regardless of size) into the fire box in a criss-cross pattern so that I don't have pieces laying in the same direction, to promote air flow.

I've often used the "leave the door cracked open a bit" method to allow the most air I can (spark flying stoppage is important of course), into the firebox when adding a new log or split, and I always have the damper fully open when introducing new wood.

Right now, my arsenol includes newspaper, Fatwood, 1" x 1" x 6" kindling, and then the splits...........I think I'll have to add another pile of say 3" x 3" x 6" pieces to my arsenol. Otherwise, I'm burning through my 1" x 1" x 6" kindling like it's going out of style!!

-Soupy1957

 

[Adios Pantalones]

thanks to all.............it would seem that the popular concensus is that I need to have some good burn to my starter fire, and THEN introduce some "in between" sized splits, before I move toward the BIG stuff.

-Soupy1957

I think that last few posts disagree. In fact- my stove and several others ' do better by loading it up first. I bet there are more people that just never tried this because they were raised with kindling, small fire first, etc. as someone above said- that's important in a fireplace or open fire outdoors. A little heat creates a good draft that fans a woodstove fire like mad.

 

[Jags]

I am on the "load 'er up" team as well. Fiddling with little fires, then bigger fires, then a real fire is for campfires. Load it up, give it some air and strike a match. If that DOESN'T work, you probably have another issue hindering it.

 

[karri0n]

I DO use a moisture meter to check the wood I'm adding, (although I admit to throwing in some logs now and then without checking them), and I try to place all my wood (regardless of size) into the fire box in a criss-cross pattern so that I don't have pieces laying in the same direction, to promote air flow.


-Soupy1957

This is a common practice as well and should be avoided. You want to pack the fuel in as TIGHTLY as possible.


Trust us on this one, AP and Jags know their stuff.

 

[Battenkiller]

I dunno about that 3/4" wood not supporting burning.

I mean that a solitary piece of wood has a critical size beyond which it can't support it's own combustion. Somewhere around 3/4-1" thick is about as big as a piece of wood can get and stay lit without other pieces near it to contain the heat. Beyond that its mass increases to a point where its own flame can provide sufficient temps to keep gasifying the rest of the wood and the flame eventually goes out. Whichever method you use to start your fire, the wood burns best when the air is being pulled through concentrated areas of heat.

 

[Battenkiller]

I think that last few posts disagree. In fact- my stove and several others ' do better by loading it up first. I bet there are more people that just never tried this because they were raised with kindling, small fire first, etc. as someone above said- that's important in a fireplace or open fire outdoors. A little heat creates a good draft that fans a woodstove fire like mad.

I'll certainly admit that it's hard to get the Boy Scout out of a man. Yeah, I was raised on campfires, probably started a thousand of them in my life but only start the stove cold once in a while since it burns constantly. I have never used firestarters, and have never had a problem with building a "campfire" in my stove. It works so well that it would seem foolish for me to try anything else, and I hardly think it is a practice to avoid. I find that a small open fire in a fairly large box gets up to temp faster than packing it full from the start. That's what has always worked for me and I've been at this a pretty long time as well. But I've never used one of these EPA stoves that rely on gasifying the wood and burning off the smoke above the fire mass, or using a catalyst to help ignite it. A different stove might change my mind. If loading it up first worked better, I'd be all over it.

My current stove burns across the back, horizontally from left to right. Loading it up too soon would certainly suffocate it. If I start with a small open fire and give it plenty of air, I'm pushing 750ºF on the stove top in no time. I don't have glass on my stove, but if I lift up the top to look inside, it is completely filled with a swirling mass of flame. When it gets to that point, I add more wood and it just about explodes into flames. At this point I start to lay the wood all in the same direction so it can drop down as the wood underneath burns. When I shut the bypass, I can hear the flame change direction and roar as it is forced into secondary combustion.

I've always associated a very tightly packed stove with long, slow, medium-temp burns. The wood seems to insulate the metal from getting the true heat from the fire for quite a while. Lasts all night long, but for shear heat output, I burn less wood in the stove at a time, give it a small to medium amount of air and more frequent refills. It could be just these old stoves, but they do put out mega amounts of heat when used this way.

Bottom line is that there are many "correct" ways to do things. The OP stated that the wood is dry but won't take off. Something is wrong. Maybe he should try it both ways and see what one works best for his stove.

 

[Troutchaser]

What kind of flue temps do you guys run on start-up?
If my box is flaming like mad for maybe five minutes, my flue temps are up 1100deg. and I've got to back the air down and damp the flue. I just can't load the stove and burn wide open to achieve a coal bed without some manipulation. Maybe it depends on the size of wood in the box, etc...

 

[Adios Pantalones]

What kind of flue temps do you guys run on start-up?
If my box is flaming like mad for maybe five minutes, my flue temps are up 1100deg. and I've got to back the air down and damp the flue. I just can't load the stove and burn wide open to achieve a coal bed without some manipulation. Maybe it depends on the size of wood in the box, etc...

I have no idea. I don't have a thermometer. I also don't aim for a coal bed, but sustainable secondary burn. A packed firebox seems to catalyze itself- more wood surface area, more burning at once, very quick heat. Also- the uncombusted gases seem to be forced to interact with the secondary tubes because with a packed firebox there's little room for gas to escape without encountering them- ergo- better secondary burns. Cracking the door for a couple helps with the high oxygen demand for the large amount of fuel that wants to burn at once. takes off like Christopher Lloyd's Delorian.

 

[Battenkiller]

OK, I'm an open minded guy.

I went down to check the stove and there was only a small amount of coals, so I thought this would be a good time to try the other method out. Stove was about 200ºF and flue was basically cool. I raked all the coals to the back (about a quart or so was what I had) because my inlet air comes in from the back. I loaded 7 splits of cherry (as much as I could fit in through the front doors) right on top of the coals without any fuss, closed the doors, opened the air all the way, and got out my watch.

Within a few minutes I could hear the air start to pull through, but no change in temp anywhere. Stove was still cool enough to put my hand on it. After 10 minutes, the flue temp hit about 250º and the stove was at almost 300º. 5 minutes later the flue was up to a little over 300º and the stove top was about 400º. 5 minutes more and the flue temp was 450º and the stove was about 450º. Slow compared to my normal startup, but better than I had expected. Over the next 5 minutes the flue was up to 550º and the stove at 650º as measured with my IR thermometer. I looked inside and it looked just about how it would have looked if I had started it from kindling - a big bowl of flames. I shut it down and heard the secondary kick in. Flue temp dropped down to 275ºF over the next ten minutes, but that's where it sometimes likes to sit no matter what I do. With today's weather, I've got something to blame it on.

So...

It works better than I thought, so I'll have to play around with it. Only slightly slower startup than with my method (about 10 minutes more), but the results in the end were basically identical. Hot stove, plenty of heat. A bit less fuss.

Interesting that cracking the door has little effect on my stove when started this way because the coals are in the back. Didn't need it anyway. Also, when I load the stove through the doors I can't get in anywhere as much wood as I can by loading it from the top, so it ends up at the same "half-full" place that I fill it to ordinarily for a daytime burn.

 

[karri0n]

Interesting to hear the results from an older, non-epa unit, BattenKiller. Do you have any pictures of your stove? The rear air inlet intrigues me!

How does secondary combustion work in that stove? Is it a downdraft like the older tempwoods, or does it use a catalyst?

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Batten- the fact taht it's non-epa may be part of the difference. Like I said- I think that the wood being near the secondaries is part of the effect. We had a little VC when I was a kid and it was always kindling etc- of course it was wettish wood too.

 

[Battenkiller]

Do you have any pictures of your stove? The rear air inlet intrigues me!

How does secondary combustion work in that stove? Is it a downdraft like the older tempwoods, or does it use a catalyst?

karriOn,

Secondary combustion on the Vigilant works by having a pre-heated secondary air supply feed air into a secondary combustion chamber in the back of the stove. You can't really see the secondaries because they're hidden behind the fireback inside the box, but you can hear the gases light off when you close the bypass damper. Not really a downdraft, but the air comes in through five inlet holes on the bottom of the fireback, just above the coals in the photo. With the bypass closed, the gases must pass through the coal bed like in a downdraft stove and then into the large rectangular opening at the bottom of the fireback on the right. It goes on a convoluted path through some baffles before it exits to the upper left hand portion of the secondary chamber some 55 inches later - one of the longest flame paths in any production stove.

No way it works like an EPA stove (or they'd still be making them this way), but at the time it was considered state of the art burning technology. I'm a dinosaur and I love the old technologies. It is a complicated stove to run, but I love its versatility, so I've learned to love its difficult ways. It's been a challenge to learn and it can get a bit intimidating just like its big brother the Defiant. It can really get away from you if you lapse in your attention, or just sit there and smolder if you shut the bypass too soon or if the wood doesn't lay right. Personally, I think the stove is fairly clean burning considering it was thought to be a creosote factory by many. Dry wood and hot burns seem to clean it up, but many folks underestimated its power and installed it in living rooms and such. They'd shut it all the way down and feed it wet wood to slow it down even more. This stove can't be shut down that way or the secondary burn never happens, flue temps drop too fast too soon, and it just sits and smolders.

As far as efficiency, I don't think it's all that bad. I run it real hard and hot (check the photos for temps) 24/7 and I have just recently passed the 4 cord mark. I learned to get more heat of out it with less wood as the season progressed, so learning the necessary technique is part of the equation I guess.