I am new-ish to wood burners, in my previous UK life I never lived with solid fuel heating.

Well I have just learnt the most counter intuitive way to light a fire in a wood burner that has changed fire lighting forever.... The top down fire.

To start your wood burner place a good charge of the normal size pieces you would burn in the fire box. Make sure all pieces face the same way. Build 2 layers as though you were stacking the wood. Load north/south for heat and east/west for duration.

Put a thin covering of kindling on TOP of the big pieces.

Now get 4 sheets of newspaper paper. Roll each sheet into a loose tube from corner to corner so you get 1-2cm dia tube. Tie each tube in a loose knot and place them on the kindling.

Light the paper, put on max, close the door and job done.

You have a quick startup fire that starts first time every time and that does not need touching for hours. It will also not fall in on itself and go out.



NOTE: DRY wood is needed.

Sorry i need video evidence since im too lazy to try it

Had a bastard of a time trying to start it last night and just gave up.

Quote from sil3ntwar :

Sorry i need video evidence since im too lazy to try it

Had a bastard of a time trying to start it last night and just gave up.

I know exactly how you feel. I am willing to bet its wet wood that caused your probs.

I learnt recently that green and wet are as bad as each other. I had 6m of mixed pines + gum and it was all wet after 3 days of solid rain Had to buy 3m of kiln dryed to durn while the rest drys.

You have to ignore the wooden as acting, Gov information vid syndrome

http://www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-a ... video-WS8011CD70-1_En.htm

Top down is all we use now. Its great not having to buy fire lighters any more.

Will give it a shot. Don't know why we haven't lit it tonight its going to be -2

That video was a little odd.

So, in new zealand, wood burners are used for heating?

Well yeah they are a bit too hot and cramped to sleep in.

Interesting. Whenever I make a fire in my fireplace I sort of make a little container made of small sticks, and light a piece of newspaper inside it. The only down side is that it is hard for air to get to the newspaper, so it starts burning kinda slow, but it gets going after a while. And yea, you need dry wood, if it's wet it'll take forever to get going (if it gets going at all). I think I tried your way before, but the newspaper would eventually burn out and the sticks would not light at all. That's when I put the newspaper under the sticks and they finally burned.

Quote from DTrott :

So, in new zealand, wood burners are used for heating?

It is the norm to run some form of solid fuel yes. There has been a move to block them being fitted in new housing stock and if you replace a burner it has to be an approved type now. If you are sat on 2Ha of land you can fit whatever you want though.

The thing you have to understand is population density in NZ, this is why solid fuel is popular. Think of the UK land mass with 56 MILLION less people.... Welcome to NZ

I have just pulled out a coal range and open fire and replaced with 2 burners. I live well out of town. I could have fitted heat pumps, gas heating or something else but solid fuel is just better.

1) Wood in a good burner is far far cheaper than other forms of heating to run.
2) You still get heat in a power cut, and we get them from time to time
3) You get your hot water for free.
4) You can cook on them, we even have oven top for the kitchen burner.

The other thing to think of is that in the UK most of your power is Coal, gas or nuke so your coal powered electric heating is probably more dirty than my clean, modern cheap to run wood burners. Even most of the UK gas comes from eastern block countries so you have all those costs involved.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Interesting. Whenever I make a fire in my fireplace I sort of make a little container made of small sticks, and light a piece of newspaper inside it. The only down side is that it is hard for air to get to the newspaper, so it starts burning kinda slow, but it gets going after a while. And yea, you need dry wood, if it's wet it'll take forever to get going (if it gets going at all). I think I tried your way before, but the newspaper would eventually burn out and the sticks would not light at all. That's when I put the newspaper under the sticks and they finally burned.

Yep, I used to do that. But then you have to keep tending the fire. Adding wood etc.

It has transformed using the fires since converting to top down starting and burn cycles with big loads.

You might burn more but so what. With 2 fires running long hours I think we will burn through 15-20 m3 this winter. We are currently running at 3 m3 per month with one fire running 24/7

Exactly how cold does it get down there in the winter?

Differs greatly on where you are.
Check here for the weather records where i am http://www.hamiltonweather.co.nz/
No snow just a lot of frosts in winter.

Im in the north island the south island is much colder.

I am near Christchurch (South Island about 1/2 way down) and it hits -5 ish. Further down they get hoarfrosts so can get v cold.

Its not British Columbia cold though, The only time I experienced -27C was in Whistler

lol @ -27, but Whistler is in the mountains so I'm not surprised. Here in Toronto we have a couple weeks of -20 degree weather every winter, that's about as cold as it gets. But over in the prairies they regularly experience -30 degrees every year. We don't have wood-burning stoves though for heat, we have gas furnaces. Many houses have wood-burning fireplaces, but they are more of a luxury, not really for warming up the house, but in a power outage it's very good to have one.