Starting a Fire

Hello everyone,

I've been using my new stove off and on for the past two weeks (it is not my main source of heat) and was wondering about the best way to light a new fire once the fire dies. Should I clean out the left over anthracite or build a new wood fire on top of it? Figured the wood ash may clog up the coal bed and choke out the fire.

Thanks in advance!
Jeff

Dig a hole in the middle of the coal, and try some 'match light' charcoal. Others on here have good luck with it.

Indeed we do--Fill yer profile out--probably be better if we knew what kind of stove!!

Shake it down a bit until you see a little good coal in the pan with the dead coal. I've built a wood fire on top of a nearly dead coal fire and it revives the entire firebox after a while. IMHO, what SWPaDon suggests should work fine too. I'd be willing to bet that a small wood fire on the top of the match light would speed it up a by providing a faster source of heat to warm the chimney. There shouldn't be enough wood ash from one little fire to choke off the air gaps in the coal beneath. Once either or both are down to mostly read coals, I'd be inclined to try topping it with a inch or two of anthracite.

Let us know how it goes ... or went

Depends on how much coal you have left in your fire box, if the fire completely burned out just leaving ash, the best method would be simply dig out everything and start from scratch. If you have black coal, try pushing it around and start a new fire, but you still may have ash build up on the corners. I’d recommend just cleaning it out and starting from scratch. As many will contest, a fire from a clean fire box will produce a lot more heat than a fire than has been burning for a few weeks.

I let the stack temp get up with a kindling fire and learned the hard way not to get too crazy with it as cracked a piece of glass. Once some wood coals add a bit more kindling and sprinkle coal over it in sections. It seems to keep draft up and relights half burned coal left from lost fire. I build the bed up going left right a couple inches at a time in no big hurry and a job for tonight as going to 40 tonight and cold after tomorrow afternoon for all of the 10 day forecast. Oil is cheaper but have more coal than cash so an easy choice here. I am sure there are several ways that all work well and sure everyone has a variation of a basic theme. Only my second year and learned how to create every possible mistake short of a puff back and will enjoy skipping that one.

freetown fred wrote:Indeed we do--Fill yer profile out--probably be better if we knew what kind of stove!!

Didn't realise I had left it empty! Sorry about that.

Nice J. Thank you.

Shake out the loose ash and leave the chunks of unburned or partially unburned coal. Make a hold in the middle and start your wood fire, than add fresh coal later.

I'm sure you're already up and running, but if you really want to be confused, there's a sticky on this subject at the top of the handfired content page. it's probably one of the most popular question by us newbs. I use-ta use wood, and agree it would provide a quick and strong draft, but when I had a stove with a nice viewing window like yours, it always got charred with soot. After many attempts of trying to keep the glass covered with foil, (to no avail), I was enlightened to the "Match-lite" method, and will never go back. (But hey...that's just me ) Enjoy your new fire, but keep the windowstats adjusted properly.

joeq wrote:I'm sure you're already up and running, but if you really want to be confused, there's a sticky on this subject at the top of the handfired content page. it's probably one of the most popular question by us newbs. I use-ta use wood, and agree it would provide a quick and strong draft, but when I had a stove with a nice viewing window like yours, it always got charred with soot. After many attempts of trying to keep the glass covered with foil, (to no avail), I was enlightened to the "Match-lite" method, and will never go back. (But hey...that's just me ) Enjoy your new fire, but keep the windowstats adjusted properly.

I use wood to start mine and I use aluminum foil no problem once the wood is gone then I take the foil off I have a clean glass everytime!

Dug a hole and back filled it with hot charcoal from the grill. Took longer to light the coal than anticipated, but was so much easier than I thought it would be to get her rolling again

In my set up, I use wood for a scratch fire and never have any creosote - or soot for that matter - that lasts through a day after the coal fire bed is established. Wood is split into nothing bigger around than 1 1/2". It burns to coals inside of 40 minutes. Foil? Fooie !

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:In my set up, I use wood for a scratch fire and never have any creosote - or soot for that matter - that lasts through a day after the coal fire bed is established. Wood is split into nothing bigger around than 1 1/2". It burns to coals inside of 40 minutes. Foil? Fooie !

In my Surdiac, with Matchlight? 10-15 mins to add anthy. (Bazinga! Oh yeah, no foil either)

In my vigi 2310 I shake out and knife ashes out but leave a layer on the bottom to protect the grates. I put a layer of new coal down and then scoop it to the sides leaving a thin layer of coal in the middle. Then I build a small kindling fire and build it up to a couple of logs that will fit through the top loading door. Once they start going I start adding coal around the logs and build it up in layers making sure I don't snuff out the wood fire. This process takes usually about 30 minutes. You can foil your glass but any soot that won't wipe away comes off very nicely with a double edge razor blade.

MatchLite is good but you gotta have the grates pretty clean and I don't like sitting there scooping out ash.

I like the fire. Always have, always will but not enough to go back to wood burning.