How to properly light an EPA Stove !

Thanks. The house was built in three stages. The original house facing east was built during the Civil War and was very small. A second story was added to the original house sometime unknown, and the additions to the south and rear facing west were constructed during WWII.

 

I use small branches and twigs for kindling. I don't know if this would work for you, but I made a rack where I lay the branches. Then use my chainsaw to cut them into 16 inch lengths. It doesn't take long to make enough kindling to last a season.The rack was made from a couple of odd sized pallets.

 

Sa

Same here 'hunting dog' use thin wafer like pieces of maple. Also have a bunch of hemlock wafers from a big log. The maple wafers or hemlock wafers are about 16 inches long and less than an inch thick and maybe 12 - 15 inches wide. Pile em for a year or two and then sit with a small sharp axes and a box and just tap (use a block to set them on) them in thin slices so end up with about 1/2 inch by 3/4 inch pieces. It's a good way to take a break from the heavy work with the saw, splitter and wheelbarrow. After a box or two are filled and a bottle of water consumed am ready to get back at it. These work excellent and will light with a small piece of birch bark and wooden match. As you mention they burn hotter and longer than cedar or spruce.

 

I start with small pieces of newspaper (a little bigger than my hand) and light them one at a time to get a draft going. Then I light two pieces of fatwood under two or three splits.

 

Egg carton + sawdust + wax from old candles = cheap firestarter. I put one egg piece under a few small pieces of stray wood from the pile, light, and away we go.

 

I read about a trick on a grilling forum and now use it exclusively for my Kamado grill and my wood stove. Take a mason jar (or any acceptable container) fill it with cotton balls and soak with iso alcohol. They work great for bottom-up or top-down fires and I almost never cut kindling anymore. Leave lots of air space and build alternating layers of N/S and E/W. With smaller splits I can usualy get 4 layers in my stove. Throw in 2 cotton balls, light 'em up, close the door and enjoy the show.

 

I hardly ever use kindling any more, although I have a ton of it via splitter slash. I exclusively use the top down method, usually using a couple pieces of torn up shipping box cardboard. Doing this, I can usually get 4"-6" splits burning directly from the few pieces of cardboard. Sometimes when I've used kindling, the splits will catch fire first and then catch the kindling on fire!

Basically, using the top down method of starting a fire, you pretty much have to ignore everything they taught you in the Boy Scouts! But it does work!

 

Torch, kindling and a couple of splits to start. I dont like newspaper either.

 

IMHO the whole paper thing was for people who were trying to make a trash burner out of their wood stove, also if you burn correctly they will be no chance of a chimney fire. A few pieces of paper will have no ill effects whatsoever.

 

SUPER CEDARS! Nuff said.

 

Not sure why I would use Super Cedars when I have other means that has worked well got close to 40 years.

 

Humans walked all over the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. We now have cars, trains, airplanes, should we continue to WALK around on the planet for transportation?

 

What's that got to do with the price of rice in China?
People heat with gas now also so what in the world are we doing heating with wood?

 

A lot!! If they don't heat their packaging plants correctly, the price of rice will go up so high we can't afford it!!

 

Both of my stoves get filled with splits. None of this jive about starting a little fire and then loading on top of those coals. Sometimes the kindling is in the middle, sometimes on top, but I have switched to exclusively starting the kindling with a trigger light propane torch. Super fast, cheap, and can be used to warm the flue if you need to establish a draft before starting the wood.

 

White birch bark works for me, it has tar in it.

 

Yeah, I have an Enerzone stove and mine also suggests small amount of paper. Which I use. I also leave my door open a bit while things "fire" for a bit as one other poster said. Mine also has a strange almost styrofoam slab that lays across bars in the top of the stove. I'm assuming to not allow this paper to fly up the chimney as easily and generally keep the flames out of the chimney.

 

That is what is called the baffle. They are commonly made of ceramic fiber insulation board. The "bars" are actually your secondary air tubes. Sounds like you have what is referred to as a "tube stove"...the tubes provide superheated oxygen and turbulence to the hottest part of the firebox to promote the burning of the gasses (smoke) produced by the primary fire (the wood burning)

 

Using a small of paper to start a fire has never been a bad practice however using your stave as a trash burner is.

 

A piece of a cheapo fire starter placed inside an old toilet paper tube underneath smaller pieces of wood does the trick here.

At the workshop, I will use a sheet or two of newspaper as this aids in the warming of the stove pipe, but usually a fire starter as well as some cedar kindling.