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[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Here at https://www.ecofiresandstoves.co.uk it turns out that we have been lighting our stoves the wrong way according to the Scandinavians.
They happen to know a great deal about wood burning, in fact you could say – they are the real experts.
On a recent trip to Denmark, the company behind one of the most popular stoves the Heta Inspire 40, showed us how they light a fire in Scandinavia, In this video Pete demonstrates ‘Top Down Lighting’ and how it can make the lighting of a stove much easier. Many people experience problems lighting their stoves from scratch and also have to overcome many have problems getting them working after cold conditions.
This is the easy way.. Need any help, please call the showroom on 01252 815100[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]For those that just want to read the text:
Hi, I’m Pete from Ecofires and Stoves in Crookham Village in Fleet. Today I want to talk about a new way of lighting a Stove. Well, not necessarily a new way, but a way that’s proved to overcome a few problems with stoves smoking into rooms having problems getting them going after cold conditions. We’ve always had a traditional way of doing it where we put the kindling underneath the logs like the kindling and that gets your stove going.
Now, it’s a little bit different. This is very much a Scandinavian way of doing things and since we’ve been over there and talked to them in Denmark about how they light their stoves. It makes perfect sense to us. So we use it all the time now and I think it might be helpful to a lot of people who are having problems lighting their stoves and getting smoke coming into their room.
And I’d just like to explain why that is and give you a little demonstration on how to do it. This new way of lighting a stove is what we call top down lighting. This is what it looks like in your stove. I want to give you a quick demonstration outside the stove to make it easier.
And as I do that, I’ll explain what what what happens Basically – normally, you would put your kindling down first and then put your wood on top. This way, you put your main pieces of wood on the base of the stove directly onto the base or the grate or whatever stove you’ve got. You try to make a little bit of a flat surface.
So I just want to put another bit there. Bit of kindling in the middle then you’d put your fire lighters there. And then the kindling goes on top of the wood. Allowing plenty of air space between each piece. I do what’s called a little Jenga pile. You build it up like so.
Some people like to do three layers, I like to do four layers and there’s a reason for that. Now what’s happening is now you’ll light the fire lighter that’s under there and the kindling will get going and that will be introducing Heat at a high point in the stove. So it’s closest to the flu and the baffle.
So what that’s going to do. It’s going to get the flu hotter quicker than if you were lighting underneath here and waiting for the heat to get it up to the flu area. It’s vital for a stove to have that chimney or that flue pulling air flow through into the stove and bearing in mind that wood burns from the top not underneath.
Anyway, that’s going to burn down and get the stove going far quicker, but it’ll also help with that initial smoking, because you’re introducing that heat directly into the flue bit like a bonfire at home. If you let a bonfire smoulder away, you got smoke going everywhere. If you suddenly get it hotter and you shuffle it about with your poker and all the sudden the flames get going the smoke disappears.
So this is really important in getting the stove going and for clean use as well. I’m now going to light this stove. I think it’s appropriate that we have a Scandinavian stove as its the Scandinavian way of doing things. This is a Heta Inspire 40 from Denmark. These are the people we went to see that said I was doing it wrong in the first place – quite happy to hold my hands up there.
So I’m now going to light this stove get that kindling going.
I’m going to light the fire lighter that’s in just below the kindling there.
Let that get going. It’s always important as well when you initially light a stove. To just leave the door slightly ajar, and your controls fully open obviously. That door is slightly ajar there. That’s just letting a bit more air rush in just to let that fire get established. So what we do we let that get going will come back to it in five minutes time………
Right, this is the same stove believe it or not only 10 minutes later and you can see that kindling really got going very quickly. The main logs are burning well…This actually got up to temperature a lot quicker than normal and I think that’s because I put an extra layer kindling on the top it got going really quickly again also is got hot so quickly my fans already going which they need a bit of heat on the top of the stove to get going.
So what you can see here is you got. A nice white ash on the lock. You got cherry red embers. So it’s almost ready to start to turn down. I don’t recommend turning down really until about half an hour, keep the controls fully open.
But if that was up to temperature now that was going for another twenty ten minutes or so, I’d be turning that down introducing another Log. Just let it tick over. It’s already up to temperature.
That’s how good top-down lighting is.Really does work. well, especially when you had particularly cold damp weather where that flu has not got hot enough. What would have been happening is the cold plug of air in that flue will not let the smoke up. It’s just going to come back down what this has done is it’s heated up the flue really quickly and as you can see it works really well.
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