I have been using my quadrafire 4300 for 6 years now. I still find it fun to start different fires, and different loading techniques. This one I have been playing with for awhile, I call it the canyon fire. Using a short piece of kindling, it holds the splits apart. Kindling on the bottom starts it. Stack the splits on both sides. It burns straight up the middle, and the stacked pieces eventually fall in on themselves.
I find it interesting how you stack wood in the stove with bark down rather than up. That seems backwards to me, especially when starting a fire.
Why would that make a difference? Its all gotta burn and i would think the bark would be the easiest to start burning? Isnt it the "wood gas" that actually burns? So why not point the wood face up toward the secondaries? I don't have a secondary type stove so maybe thats why i don't see a difference? I do bark up in my stacks outside if i think about it. In the stove..... i don't worry much.
Looks like a version of the tunnel of love, bark up or bark down makes no difference to me in the stove or the rows.
I have found the wood starts easier than the bark and what you get mostly from bark is smoke. When first starting a fire those secondaries are not firing up so smoke goes up the chimney. To get the secondaries going you need heat and you get that sooner if you light the wood on fire rather than the bark. I have also always noticed if the wood is dry the wood will light off and give heat the quickest. I am not saying you are wrong because in the end, you will get heat, which is what we all want. I am only suggesting a different method. Incidentally I have a relative who also did the fires like you are doing. They also burned a lot of bark. The reason they stopped was they found they got little heat but a lot of smoke and ash from all the bark. Good luck to you my friend.
I'll have to give er a try and see if i can notice a difference in my stove. It's amazing the slightest differences some people can notice. Maybe why bark down works for me is cause i throw a couple peices of redwood kindling in with each reload.
The wood is burning also. Maybe 2 splits in there had bark on them. This kind of fire starting seems to heat up the secondary burn tubes up faster than if the flames were deflected by other splits.
Interesting, I'm always bark down too, get it lit and acts like kindling, even grab chunks of bark that have fallen off since we don't have pine cones nor newspaper delivery here. Though I'm aware we burn totally different wood
