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Super Member
The biggest danger in burning whether someone is home or not has mostly to do with the flue or exhaust. Some people fail to clean out their chimneys on a regular basis resulting in chimney fires. Or burn a fire so hot that it doesn't matter that they have cleaned the chimney. Others fail to use retainer screws when sectioning stove pipe or indeed place combustbles too close to the stovepipes. A solid installation along with yearly maintenance willl certainly alleviate much of the reason why houses go up in flames.
I load my stove the same as you Moss (long ways deep) My method is simply to toss in the wood being careful not to throw it in too hard or else break the rear firebrick. I do no special placement of wood, paper or kindling. As a matter of fact , I do not use any kindling or paper to start fires. I do continuous burns however so my need to use such things is quite diminished. To start a fire, I simply toss in the wood letting it fall as it may until the stove is full, then I place a product called Diamond Strike a Fire somewhere between logs at the bottom and in 1/2 hour , close the stove down. Rarely fails and a box lasts the entire season . 7 bucks at Wally World.
I load my stove the same as you Moss (long ways deep) My method is simply to toss in the wood being careful not to throw it in too hard or else break the rear firebrick. I do no special placement of wood, paper or kindling. As a matter of fact , I do not use any kindling or paper to start fires. I do continuous burns however so my need to use such things is quite diminished. To start a fire, I simply toss in the wood letting it fall as it may until the stove is full, then I place a product called Diamond Strike a Fire somewhere between logs at the bottom and in 1/2 hour , close the stove down. Rarely fails and a box lasts the entire season . 7 bucks at Wally World.
We went out for the evening, so I didn't build a fire until 9:00. I built a small three log fire and got that going pretty good by 9:30. Then I put in 5 more logs, all about 5-6" diameter. Came back about 25 minutes later and oh my goodness were those logs burning nicely. I shut the air control down to low and checked it every so often until I went to bed around 1:00a.m. Super hot coals. I set a piece of oak in there and it pretty much burst into flames in my hands since the door was open and it had plenty of oxygen. I closed the door and it went back to a nice mellow flame. Got up this morning and still had a nice bed of coals. It was 33 outside and 70 on the first floor. The furnace kicked on for 5 minutes. That's the first time in several days that it came on. I put in three more logs and got them going and shut down the air. We left for the day. I'll see how it looks when I get home tonight. So far, I am very satisfied with it. We'll see when the temps drop more in the next month or two.
