Lighting a fire, top-down

We moved in November, and are now the happy owners of a modern "clean-burning" woodstove. (We're also the proud owners of an enormous splitting axe, a temporarily non-functioning circular saw and our very own woodpile, the size of which gives me immense satisfaction :D )

We've also been introduced to a new method of starting a fire, from the top down. Now I grew up with The Way of lighting a fire being kindling and paper at the bottom, then small pieces, then larger pieces of wood. Top-down is exactly the opposite - large pieces at the bottom, then smaller, finally kindling on top, and light it. The idea is that the heat helps start a good draft, wood doesn't need direct contact with the flames to ignite, and gases issuing from the bottom ignite before leaving the stove, plus the pile is very stable and doesn't collapse.

I can see that the top-down works, but I still find it very counter-intuitive, and still find myself sticking a large piece on top "not to waste" all those flames...

Those of you with woodstoves, how do you light a fire?

PS. We have this stove:
http://www.jotul.com/en/wwwjotulus/M...s/Jotul-F-373/
except it's a more basic model without the side panes of glass. We have it mounted on a rotating plinth instead so that we can turn the glass door to see the flames from wherever we're sitting. Or turn it just to get away from the heat, it gives off huge amounts of heat in full blast.

I have a Petit Godin. Sadly, I have not used it since the winter of 2010-11 because it has not been cold enough. It is designed to be lit from the bottom, and that's what I used to do back when we actually had winters. Looking at 70F this weekend, though.

Jotuls are excellent stoves; enjoy!

Bottom up! I have a small stove model. I don't think the top down thing would work, but who knows. My fires start really easy and draft just fine so I don't think I'll be switching soon.

It's been probably 15 years since we used our woodstove (since it has no emissions controls), but it wouldn't light unless we built the fire the traditional way, bottom up. No amount of holding a burning newspaper by the flue was enough to create a draft.

It wasn't that the bigger logs wouldn't light unless they were in contact with the flame, it was that the pyramid of the bigger logs created a venturi that allowed the draft.

I have lit top down. There are decent videos online to show you how. It works just fine! We have a nice low emmision soap stone stove and have not turned the furnace on once this winter (pretty nice for Michigan)!

I'm so happy with having a woodstove I'll be sad to see warmer weather come in.

While our cat of course thinks it's the greatest thing since cat food... ;)

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That's a lovely stove - and cat!

I really need to learn how to do a fire right in the wood stove we have. My husband is such a pyromaniac that he just does it, then when I am by myself in the house that has the wood stove (which isn't often, granted), I never know what to do. I'm going to have to look up one of those videos Slowspoke mentioned!

I love the top-down method, though it requires me to split more wood down for our small woodburning insert than a bottom-up fire does.

We have a lot of burn bans here because of inversion layer no matter how efficient they are. We finally pulled ours out and put in a gas stove.

edit - We have a lot of burn bans here due to inversion layers. All wood stoves are banned at certain times, no matter how efficient. We pulled ours and put in a gas stove.

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Originally Posted by Irulan

We have a lot of burn bans here because of inversion layer no matter how efficient they are. We finally pulled ours out and put in a gas stove.

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I wish they'd do that here. The outdoor wood stoves have gotten really popular in the last three or four years, and people just don't even care what kind of wood they burn in those. Big clouds of smoke from wet moldy uncured softwoods just everywhere. Especially with all the storm damage, people have a lot of green wood this year. :mad: :mad:

We have a Jotul insert.
The thing gives out tremendous amounts of heat.
We also have a stock o' wood out in the back yard and my DH was just lumberjacking yesterday, bringing up logs that had been cut and drying in the hollow in our back yard and splitting them to add to the rack.
We do a bottom up light. DH is a believer in having a nice bed of hot coals to get things roaring.