Every year we get phone calls from customers that say “my stove doesn’t work properly; I’m getting a lot of smoke in the room.” There is a way to overcome that really easily. Rather than starting the fire with newspaper and kindling, you first have to preheat the chimney. There is a way to safely and easily do that with a Firestarter. You simply put one of those on the baffle area of the stove/fireplace, light it and let the heat get up the chimney so that cold air is no longer coming down the chimney.
When you are watching that Firestarter burn, you can see the flames coming toward the front of the firebox, the flames are not going up the chimney so that means that the cold air is still settling down the chimney. The flames will eventually tilt towards the back of the firebox and start going up the chimney, that’s when it has reversed and now the heat is going up the chimney.
You can now light your fire. You have overcome the cold flue plug (that is what the cold air falling down the chimney is called) and that got reversed by using a Firestarter up in the top of the baffle area. Just let those burn until the heat starts going up the chimney, sometimes it takes a little time (sometimes 5 to 10 minutes) to get enough heat going up the chimney to get that draft reversed. Once the fire is lit it just takes off because the draft is there and you get more and more heat in the chimney. You’ll want to let your fire burn for 30 to 40 minutes to really establish a strong draft before you start shutting down the fire to get a long burn time. We sell a few different types of Firestarters at both of our showrooms, so stop by to grab yours today!
