How to Build a Hot Wood Stove Fire

Seasoned, split hard wood.

The secret to a hot wood stove fire is the fuel you use to feed it. Most hot fires burn fast. To sustain a long-burning hot fire, combinations of soft and hard wood is required. Pine often has pitch, and makes a flashy hot start, hard wood such as oak or madrone, burns slowly and provides many hours of good heat. Starting out hot, then stabilizing the fire with a longer burning, heat maintaining fire is the method most wood stove users find practical and effective.

Things You'll Need

• Oak
• Pine
• Pine needles
• Pine cones
• Madrone
• Fir
• Scrap or old newspaper
• Matches or lighter
• Hatchet or small axe

Instructions

1. 

   Maintain a hot fire by adding hard-wood once the soft pine-wood hot flash start has heated your home adequately.

   Prepare your log grill for fire by making a pile of paper, pine needles and pine cones. Hottest fires like pine with pitch. Take a piece of seasoned, dry pine and split it into smaller pieces with a hatchet. Make a cone or mountain shaped from the long dry pine shavings or small split pieces. This long splintered wood structure will look like a tipi or a tall cone around and over the paper and needles, making see through walls with all tips connecting at the top in the center.

2. Confirm that your draft openings and damper are all open before starting. Place a match or lighter to the paper and needles. Continue adding dry pieces of pine, food for a very hot-burning fire. Fir works for this, as does cedar. Soft wood-feeding will keep the fire very hot-burning. When heat is at a comfortable temperature, begin to add hard wood as needed, while letting the fire slowly burn down to a healthy, hot glow with much smaller flames.

3. Turn the damper handle and close the damper on the stove pipe, to increase the heat, and reduce the air, since less air is now needed with smaller flames. Good hard woods include madrone, oak, alder, manzanita and maple to name some that are more common.

4. 

   "Bank" the fire before going to bed, by spreading out the bed of coals created by long hardwood burning, then placing a very large piece or two of hardwood onto the coals. Close the stove down, close the damper, and door and any draft holes the stove might have. Learn over time if your stove needs a small bit of air left open, or not--every stove is a little different in how it burns wood when closed down.

5. 

   The stove pipe damper handle is found on the right side about five to ten inches up the pipe from the top of the stove.

   Start the morning fire by placing strips of pine shavings with needles on the coals, then adding larger pieces as it come back to flames again. Quality stoves will still have coals and smoldering logs in the morning, ready to leap to life with air and pine to heat things up again.

Tips & Warnings

• Knowing when and how to use the stove pipe damper makes a big difference in effective air and draft control.

• Learning to dampen down the stove and fire so coals remain in the morning is the secret to keeping the house warm through the night, mastery of this skill reduces fire danger.

References

• Woodheat: How to Start and Maintain a Hot Wood Fire