Stove enthusiasts – do you burn hard wood alone in your stoves?

I’m struggling to control my new Esse 100 SE. I can get the kindling going and it burns softwood and anything kiln dried but when I’m burning seasoned hardwood it struggles to stay roaring when I close the bottom vent.

Do you burn a mixture of soft & hard?

Leave the vent open.

1. Is the hardwood really seasoned?
2. Get a flue thermostat to find out what the temperature is – sometimes hardwood can burn hotter without roaring.
3. It shouldn’t roar with the vents closed.

my burner produces most heat when you’re barely aware its lit.
as its my main heat source this is how it stays as its the most heat per kg of wood.
however on ‘date night’ the vent is open a crack and its full of small bits of wood so it fills the room with light and crackling sounds. i burn approx 3x as much wood this way and the room is about the same temp.
keep playing about, you’ll get used to it

Are you confident about the seasoned hardwood? IME on a different stove, damp wood only burns well with the the bottom vent part-open. YMMV.

If you’re new to a log burner, you might find this useful…

http://www.ed-knights-logs.co.uk/index.php/about-us

Edit: it struggles to stay lit not stay roaring.

I like the date night setting 🙂

Thanks for the link

I had this problem for the first few months using my stove.

The issue was I was adding large pieces of firewood too soon, so needed the vents open to keep it lit.

Split some hardwood down to 3 inches or so, then once you’ve got the kindling going well, add the hardwood and close the lower vent to 50% and the stove temp should start rising.

Once mine is hot, lower vent is fully closed and airwash closed just a tad to stop it roaring, about 80% open. At this point I can add whatever hunk of wood I can manoeuvre through the door without risking it going out.

On a related note, I’ve just cut 5 (small ish) leylandi down, and some other random tree, anyone near Reading want some firewood? Stripped 90% of the branches off the trunks. Guess about 30ft, of 8″ diameter trunks?

Catch: You’ll need a small medium large great big **** off trailer to take away the leaves/small branches either to the tip or if you’ve a garden or field to burn them in, it currently makes about a 6ft tall pile by 12ft diameter, and it’s in the back garden so it needs carrying round the side of the house.

Really selling this aren’t I?

Thanks for the offer but I’m in the north west.

I’m sure somebody off here will take it off your hands.

The seasoned hardwood isn’t seasoned. This is very common, especially buying it during the winter.

Firstly the wood has to be very dry. More importantly, you need to create a bed of hot embers on which to burn the logs; they won’t burn well just on their own no matter how much draft you put through. We have a multi-fuel so we start the fire with kindling, then smokeless fuel then chuck the logs on top of that and it burns nicely.

Don’t burn leylandii, it’s full of resins that will tar up your flue.

globalti – I’ve been told not to burn smokeless and wood at the same time. Is this rubbish too?

Don’t burn leylandii, it’s full of resins that will tar up your flue.

I’d better get digging a fire pit then 😈

We burn everything so long as it’s thoroughly dry. Run the stove hot with plenty of air and you won’t tar up the flue. We burn the whole tree: fell in the Autumn when there’s a minimum of sap, and snip up the smaller stuff to make kindling and fast burning material for when the stove needs to be hot enough for cooking.

Burning with insufficient air is highly polluting, open you lower air vent, your neighbours will appreciate.

I’ve been told not to burn smokeless and wood at the same time. Is this rubbish too?

Yes and no…

Dry wood – no problem
Wet wood – big problem, the condensation from the wood will mix with the sulphurous smoke from the solid fuel and coat the liner with acid.

Worst my sweep has seen is someone wrecking a Midtherm 904 liner (pretty much the best money can buy) in 18 months. Sopping wood, cheap coal stored out in the rain, chucked together onto a big boiler stove and slumbered day and night.

Ah right okay. So if I’m starting with dry smokeless and sticking dry logs on later, do I have the riddling grate open or closed?

Burning with insufficient air is highly polluting, open you lower air vent, your neighbours will appreciate.

If you are burning wood the bottom vent should be near closed. Its the top/airwash vent that should be open, also remember that modern stoves normally have a permanent vent at the rear to ensure the fire always get a minimum airflow. If you’ve got an old Aga or something (seeing as your cooking on it) then perhaps you are correct to leave the lower vent open.

If you have clean stove glass and the firebricks are their cream colour, you are burning clean. I can tell if I put partially seasoned logs on or have the airwash shut too far as the stove soots up within the hour. I had douglas fir to burn a couple of years ago and I would just add the occasional log between my other stuff as it would blacken the glass within minutes. I suspect it wasn’t fully seasoned either…don’t trust my moisture meter!

I’ve just moved out of my house that had a se 100.
Never had any problems with it.
Open both vents. Build a jenga block with kindling on top of a fire lighter. Light an leave the door on the open latch. Leave for 10/15 mins then add a few bits of soft wood. Once that’s blazing, shut the door and close the bottom vent. Add hardwood once the soft wood is glowing. Control with top vent.
If it’s struggling, open the bottom vent/door for a few minutes.

Agree with Spooky and Russ, although 10-15 mins is way too long on my stove, I’d have nowt left! Mine only takes less than 2 minutes to get a roar going (all to do with the chimney draw I’d imagine)

I usually like to have a decent stock of softwood/old joists etc to get the fire going, but this year I’ve sort of ran out and I’m only left with some well seasoned cherry. Fortunately I never chopped it too big, so it’s been easy enough to get going.

I don’t use firelighters though, just newspaper. All the old lady pensioners around drop their papers off, bless ’em. The Sun seems to burn like stink, daily mail not so good!.

Have a google of “top down stoking”

Basically, put some big logs on the bottom, then a fire lighter on top, and a small kindling stack on top. I usually then put a small log on top of that. As the kindling burns, it drops down to ignite the big logs. As they release gas, this is burnt by the kindling fire on top, as opposed to just disappearing up the chimney.

Light fire, close door, open vents. 2 minutes to roaring fire.

Btw – is it just my woodpile that’s home to 10 million wood lice?

We’ve got a coast redwood down, up the back of the campus. Lots of wood in there, free to a good home, only downside is the trunk is about a metre thick so you’ll need a big saw.

Also, it’s pretty much inflammable, which makes it ideal for an STW woodpile which is more art than actually for burning.

Btw – is it just my woodpile that’s home to 10 million wood lice?

I think the giant spiders must eat all the wood lice in my pile…

Get a nice bed of hot embers from burning smaller stuff, getting the stove nice and hot, and then chuck the bigger stuff in. Mine will burn pretty much anything like that, even damp stuff if i’m desperate, if it does die, I open the door a tiny crack and within a minute or so, it’ll come back.

Also if its multi fuel, those coal briquettes are great for maintaining a hot bed of embers, and they’re usually still going the day after. I chuck 3 or 4 in when I light it.

Woodlice like dark and damp. You can’t do anything about dark. Is the pile off the ground and covered from rain?

Yes, covered and off the ground. My back garden just seems to be the centre of the woodlouse universe! At night there’s probably 100 of them on the outside of my shed.

Anyone got an indoor woodstore? any advice? I’m expecting to have to buy more expensive prepared wood, rather than progging (might be Yorkshire technical terminology?) for wood.