Challenges of rural life

Making a Fire in a Wood Stove

By Sam ⋅ December 20, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Learning how to make a fire and keep it burning in a wood stove

You’d think that making a fire would be making a fire and that it wouldn’t matter whether it was in a fireplace or in a wood stove.  Apparently this isn’t true.  Of course I’m the woman who actually had to Google ‘how to make a fire’ in order to be able to use my fireplace in France so I’m not exactly an expert.

We have a wood stove in the house in Grey County.  When we bought the house last year we assumed it would just be like a fireplace, that we’d use it on lazy winter weekend afternoons, atmosphere as much as anything. 

That was before Meg and John experienced the limitations of the oil furnace and the reality of a Grey County winter.  The price of oil being one, the inefficiency of an old furnace being another, and the lack of insulation in the house being the kicker.

We’ll slowly deal with the furnace and the insulation but renovating a house when you’re only there on the weekend takes a while.  In the meantime the wood stove is playing a key role in keeping us warm.  When we can light the fire and keep it burning.

I arrived in Priceville yesterday at about 3 pm.  Meg was coming from Toronto and the plan was that I would get the house warmed before she arrived.  Good plan.  Didn’t really work.

• You need kindling to light a fire – in fact I suspect that a key to lighting a fire is kindling.  We don’t have any. 
• The wood needs to be dry – even if you have kindling it takes a lot to light damp logs.
• Fire needs a draft – it’s important to know which way to slide the little bar to  open and close the damper.  And to understand when the damper should be open and when it should be closed.
• You need to feed the fire once you get it going – if it took 5 hours and at least as many disappointing false starts to get the fire going you better remember to keep adding wood.

Meg and I finally got the fire burning at bedtime.  Finally. 

I slept in.  Meg didn’t think to put wood on the fire when she got up.  The fire has gone out.  I’m wearing so may layers that I look like the  Michelin man.  It’s hard to type.

It’s decision time. 

• Do I try and find and axe and some dry wood and make kindling?
• Do I hope that John arrives tonight and let him make kindling?
• Do we buy a bag of firewood and use it as kindling?
• Do we cheat completely and use those little fire starter things?

Only time will tell.

Tags: wood stove fire grey county priceville