"upside down" fire lighting in a gasifier?

[pybyr]

Hello all--

with my former wood/ hot air furnace, someone clued me into the counter-intuitive but very effective technique of upside-down fire building--

--where you put the big wood on the bottom, and go to smaller and smaller up to the top, and then have the kindling and paper on top.

that worked _really_ well with my old unit- the small stuff on top would "take off" and create a draft that'd get it roaring, and then drop coals into the bigger stuff below, which would begin to light off, too.

I am curious as to whether anyone has tried this upside-down method with success in a downdraft gasifier?

I recall NoFo mentioning having tried it with little success in his EKO 25- just wondering if it is a technique that is generally/ completely unsuited to getting a fire going in a downdraft gasifier, or whether it varies with unit/ wood/ technique, etc., and whether anyone has had any luck with it

Thanks

 

[Eric Johnson]

I keep meaning to try it, but haven't yet. During most of the heating season I'm just throwing wood on top of a bed of coals, so I do very little firestarting from scratch.

 

[Kipstr]

I think I will try it right now I'll post my results later this evening.

 

[Kipstr]

It didn't work as well as Nofossil's " Four minute gasifier startup, minimal smoke" I was about 25 minutes to get gasifaction.

And yes I can get 4-5 minute gasifaction almost every time, using Nofossil startup.

 

[pybyr]

It didn't work as well as Nofossil's " Four minute gasifier startup, minimal smoke" I was about 25 minutes to get gasifaction.

And yes I can get 4-5 minute gasifaction almost every time, using Nofossil startup.

now we know- and thanks for being the guinea pig- with no storage yet, and with my oil turned off, I hadn't wanted to risk fooling with something other than the NoFo method. I can't really get gasification in 5 minutes, but I think that is because my remaining wood is not as dry as I wish it was...

 

[Fred61]

That's exactly the way I lit my old Wood Gun. Big stuff, then kindling and paper on top! It was a negative pressure firebox with a huge fan on the output side and it moved tons of CFM of air. I didn't have you guys around back then to start me thinking about varying the fan speed, however it probably needed to move a hell of a lot of air because it didn't have provisions for secondary air. All the air came in through one motorized damper. The thing actually would blow sparks out of a 20 foot chimney on a regular basis.