Starting a fire

[pen]

That's doesn't make it wrong now. The fact is, starting a fire with a bit of paper and dry wood is a simple task.

Agreed.

What got me to change is that the composition of our local paper must have changed from cheap to complete junk. It wouldn't burn for crap. Once my stockpile of old paper got low, I bought some supercedars and couldn't believe how easy it was.

Since then I've been making my own firestarters with the boys and getting the same results. Even with the homemade ones, it's just easier than fussing with the paper and use much less kindling too.

pen

 

[Waulie]

Agreed.

What got me to change is that the composition of our local paper must have changed from cheap to complete junk. It wouldn't burn for crap. Once my stockpile of old paper got low, I bought some supercedars and couldn't believe how easy it was.

Since then I've been making my own firestarters with the boys and getting the same results. Even with the homemade ones, it's just easier than fussing with the paper and use much less kindling too.

pen

That's the truth. The new newspaper does burn like crap. We never seem to run out of decent burning stuff though. With the dead ash trees everywhere I have no shortage of kindling either. The bark usually pops right off while splitting and makes great kindling if kept dry. If I had to do much extra work I'd definitely give firestarters a try.

Although I disagreed with the OP a bit regarding fire starting, I will say that I do keep the home fires burning most of the time so in the grand scheme of things it's kind of a meh issue.

 

[Stella]

Just had my first all night burn, completely unintentionally. Went to lay the fire, put down the pieces of newspaper which immediately caught light. Just showed me how careful I should be as it was around14 hours since I put a pine log on it and I did not think to check how hot the ash was in the morning.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

With our well insulated house and mild weather we generally only start a fire in the evening and let it burn through the night, but let it go out in the morning. That leaves plenty of heat in the house for the day.
When it gets cold enough outside it's nice to be able to reload on coals in the morning, but I'm not going to keep the house uncomfortably warm just to do so.
Firewood is dry, so restarts are not a problem. Always have an excess of paper, cardboard and kindling lying around anyway.