Why Did it Take Me a Year to Figure this Out?

[Eric Johnson]

Longer, actually, if you count all my years of wood boiler experience.

After fooling around with matches all last season, trying to start fires from cold starts, this season I finally got fed up and used a propane torch. Beats burned fingers, smoky clothes and fires that take forever to get started. You can light unburnt coals with a torch, or just about anything else in the firebox.

I may be slow on the uptake, but I'm willing to change for the better.

 

[sfriedri]

Longer, actually, if you count all my years of wood boiler experience.

After fooling around with matches all last season, trying to start fires from cold starts, this season I finally got fed up and used a propane torch. Beats burned fingers, smoky clothes and fires that take forever to get started. You can light unburnt coals with a torch, or just about anything else in the firebox.

I may be slow on the uptake, but I'm willing to change for the better.

I've been doing this for a while, but I feel guilty when I do it because it feels like cheating to use a propane torch to light a wood fire. Do you light your fires from the secondary chamber by firing the propane flame up through the nozzle, or do you light from the primary chamber? The only trick to lighting from the primary chamber is that when you turn the torch upside down it tends to go out.

 

[M1sterM]

Longer, actually, if you count all my years of wood boiler experience.

After fooling around with matches all last season, trying to start fires from cold starts, this season I finally got fed up and used a propane torch. Beats burned fingers, smoky clothes and fires that take forever to get started. You can light unburnt coals with a torch, or just about anything else in the firebox.

I may be slow on the uptake, but I'm willing to change for the better.

It only took me as long as it took to use up a single, butane bbq-grill type lighter...it ran out, and as I was frantically looking for a book of matches, lo and behold, there was my propane torch sitting out from a plumbing project...I'll probably never use anything else.

 

[sdrobertson]

I've been doing this for a while, but I feel guilty when I do it because it feels like cheating to use a propane torch to light a wood fire. .[/quote]

Next big thing and no guilt - someone will have to figure out how to bottle woodgas.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I know what you mean about the feeling that you're cheating, but I'm over that now. I start a fire in the primary chamber. The advantage of the torch is that you can put some serious flame all over the place, not just starting one place with a match and hope it spreads. Thinking about it, poking the torch tip up through the nozzles would work pretty well, too.

 

[JustWood]

With age comes wisdom ! :wow:
Hopefully Jebatty dosen't get wind of this thread. :gulp:

 

[ssupercoolss]

are we talking the propane torch i might use to sweat some pipe, or the one attached to a bbq tank? i always think bigger is better.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Pipe sweat torch. Use the other one at your own risk.

 

[Huskurdu]

I usually just use crumpled newspaper (we get one paper a week), small pieces of 1" hardwood cutoffs (bought a triaxle load of it, what a pain in the butt), then open the flue, open the bottom combustion chamber and light the paper and within 10 minutes I have a roaring fire ready to be switched over to down draft again. Do the Eko's and Tarms have this ability to open the bypass flue and secondary combustion chamber?

 

[taxidermist]

I am going to use my weed dragon and a small 20 #lb tank to start the fire and pre heat the lower chamber.


Rob

 

[free75degrees]

funny, on my 1st fire my torch was sitting right there because I had been recently using it, so I used it to start the fire. I liked it so much I'll probably never anything else!

 

[chuck172]

Jebatty, I think they are bustin' your chops.

 

[penfrydd]

While you're torching away, about a 1/4 cup of waste oil does wonders...

 

[chrisfallis]

Clean burning propane might be perfect for a backyard BBQ or for soldering copper pipes, but lighting a fire? Pshaw! It seems practically sacrilegious to an old boy scout. Give unto me a match and some twigs and I will kindle thee an inferno.

 

[Nofossil]

My vote is with Eric. Life's way too short to be a purist. I suspect a pound of propane will last several seasons. I'm saving 5000 pounds of fuel oil per year. Assuming two seasons per pound of propane....

I'll settle for 99.99% reduction in fossil fuels. Actually, I still burn a few gallons between my chainsaw and tractor, so I'm maybe only 99.5% pure. Good enough - I'm going to have a beer to celebrate.

 

[machinistbcb]

dido on the propane torch. Just as i finished my install and was ready to light the first fire it was sitting right there. I have not used anything else since.

 

[jebatty]

Jebatty, I think they are bustin' your chops.

You couldn't have put it more clear. That said, I changed my boiler starting strategy this year too. Rather than rolling newspaper knots, I take 2-3 big handfuls of wood planer shavings, drop them on top of the kindling, light the edge with a match, turn on the draft fan, and the fire takes off even easier that the newspaper knots. Haven't missed a one match light yet.

So ... we're all open to choices. If propane works for you, more power to you.

 

[pybyr]

i've been using my propane turbo torch to light my old sam daniels wood furnace for 3 years now, at least for any load that doesn't take off on the first try with paper and kindling.

if I have stubborn wood, I throw the MAPP tank on the torch and have never failed to achieve ignition.

 

[WoodNotOil]

I have used my torch as well for a couple of years, works great. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

On another note. I ran out of kindling the other day and had a paper bag and a lot bark on the basement floor from throwing down and stacking wood. Fillled the bag partway and rolled it like a log. Hit it with the torch and the fire took care of itself. All that concentrated bark made some nice coals that made gasification happen sooner.

 

[deerefanatic]

I tried the propane torch thing tonight..... Worked quite well....... Thanks for the idea guys!

 

[hkobus]

Hmm, sounds like some are coming out of the clos.. eh furnace :red: Or should this be in the new "it"s a gas" :lol:

 

[jebatty]

Does the lighting method have something to do with the quality of the kindling? Since I do quite of bit of woodworking, my kindling is lots of small, very dry pine pieces, many only 1/8-1/2" thick, plus edging of rough sawn pine boards done by the sawmill. All cut 18" long. They light almost as well as paper.

 

[sweetheat]

I've been trained in the one match method. A standing joke around here is the amount of matches you must use to light a fire in dry kindling. Now with the new tarm about to be fired up I may have to change my ways and go for a propane torch. I've a woodworking associate who always uses the propane to light the shop stove. I can never find the striker when I have to do it. sweetheat

 

[Vtgent49]

OK, the honesty thread. My wood/oil Simplex uses the same chamber, essentially. We just load some softwood scraps, and 4-5 full size pieces. Then we go up the stairs, and at the top of the stairs is a light switch that starts the oil burner. After 5-8 minutes we turn it off, and the fire is boiling away. 5 minutes at .75/gals/hour so I'm not in Nofossils class, but we use about 100 gals of oil per year, most of which is consumed when we go to FL for two weeks to race sailboats, and then burn pure oil.


The light switch at the top of the stairs controls the burner only, and is seperate from the Red Oil Burner Emergency switch that many have. That switch cuts the power to all the pumps, etc. Kind of odd actually.

Most of the oil is sub 2.00 oil, but be forwarned that multi-year storage of oil needs additives as discussed on other threads.

In reality, it seems to me that making a serious impact on the US Oil consumption scene will require something both convenient, and dummy-proof. So, what we learn/share on here is useful, but really is just adding to the pool of info that will help someone create the next gen system.

I've just returned from a Renewable Energy Conference in Burl., VT. Pretty much the "same old" stuff. The latest news there was that pellets are now going for 350/ton, delivered, so essentially above firewood price/btu, when delivered. I'm told that 1 ton of pellets = 1.25 cords of good wood.

Al

 

[pybyr]

. The latest news there was that pellets are now going for 350/ton, delivered, so essentially above firewood price/btu, when delivered. I'm told that 1 ton of pellets = 1.25 cords of good wood.

Al

guy's farm and yard in Montpelier has a sign out that I noticed yesterday saying "pellets $350/ ton"- confirming what you are saying