Getting a reluctant fire going

[rich59]

I had lit a fire in my home grate this week, but after an initial burn it settled into a sullen glow that got less and less. A friend of mine was round and he suggested putting a piece of newspaper in front of the fire. Mystified I tried this. Firstly it nearly flew up the chimney with the updraft. But then he balanced the fire tongs on the front of the openning and laid the sheet over that. The paper sealed to the front of the openning with the updraft, leaving only the space under the fire for air to enter and pass up the chimney. Within 5 minutes we had a roaring fire!

This caused me to think about other aids when outside and the fire is reluctant and we would rather not keep bending down to blow it or fan it. Any ideas?

 

[Goose]

My nan taught me that trick, and used to go ballistic at me if the newspaper caught as it would shoot up the chimney!

 

[AlexRowan]

Me mother does that!

I always add a little petrol if the fire is a little reluctant.... (ducks)

 

[Goose]

Cooking oil is more effective and lots safer than petrol!!

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, it's a good old trick.

Outdoors is much more difficult, as you don't have the chimney to generate the updraught or the fireplace to control it. It's really a question of preparing your fire well - using split wood rather than in the round (increases surface area and exposes dry wood), orienting it correctly to the wind, that sort of thing. Digging out a trench that runs into the heart of the fire from the windward side can help, as can lifting the fire up off the ground - I usually like to use a bed of rocks under the fire to help circulate air. The rocks can also come in handy for cooking on if you place them carefully. Good selection of firewood is also very important - I'll go to quite some lenghts to get a good bit of oak or ash.

Finally, if you're really having trouble, some barbeque charcoal can really make a difference.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Having lived in houses with open fires for most of my life, I thought everybody knew that trick - oh well.
Have to agree with Gregroach's comments about getting air to flow up through your fire rather than bypass it. I saw somewhere recently, that somebody used a Pringles tube to create the chimnea effect to get a fire going

Ogri the trog

 

[fast but dim]

i use a bike pump when my woodburner wont light.its superb!

 

[running bare]

sugar is usually a good helper

 

[match]

An odd one, and I'm not sure exactly how it works, is to mix roughly equal parts of vegetable oil, strong washing up liquid and sugar together - til it forms a sort of gel, and smear this over wood etc - this usually takes well and burns very hot for a short pewriod of time - something I use a lot when kindling is scarce and I'm in holiday cottages etc where kitchen ingredients are plentiful, but newspaper/wood isn't

Another useful tip is that the biggest factor in the draw of a chimney is the width/depth of the fireplace relative to the width of the chimney. If you have a really wide fireplace with a small chimney, it tends to smoke back into the room.

The way I usually build a fire in such a grate is to put a large log on each side of the grate, and one at the back, then build a small fire in the remaining space. Stack up branches across the small fire (use the large logs as walls, and lay the branches over as a roof). As these burn down gradually add more horizontal flat branches over the top of the logs. Eventually the large logs themselves will catch and can be dragged into the centre, and new logs added to the side if necessary.

If you can get the small fire started with coal underneath, and then lay branches on top, then the extra heat this provides allows the coal underneath to burn hotter and smoke less, giving out even more heat and letting your fuel last even longer.

 

[cronos]

An odd one, and I'm not sure exactly how it works, is to mix roughly equal parts of vegetable oil, strong washing up liquid and sugar together - til it forms a sort of gel, and smear this over wood etc -

I,ve seen this done before, and your right for some reason it gets the fire going.
But why???

Cronos

 

[ilovemybed]

Typically fire comes from external oxygen combining with Hydrogen and Carbon to make Carbon Dioxide and water. The sugar is a very good source of both and reacts quickly as it's small, easily divided molecules, while the oil holds more energy in the same volume but it's harder to get as they are large complex molecules. I suppose if you burn both together you get a fair bit of energy from the oil, with the sugar there as a bit of an accelerant.

Washing up liquid stumps me though - perhaps it is something to do with emulsifying the oil?

 

[match]

I posted this question here a while ago, but didn't get an answer, so I finally asked a chemist friend of mine.

His suggestion is that the soap emulsifies the oil into tiny droplets, which would be more likely to ignite than one big 'lump' of oil. Secondly, the emulsified oil droplets would have a surface coating of water, and the sugar would be able to dissolve in this, giving an oil droplet coated in sugar - nice and flammable.

However it works, it works very nicely though

 

[bambodoggy]

I've used the old newspaper trick many times and it does work well. I have no need to do that now as our woodburning stove has nice little dials to open and close the air in different places

To answer your question a little more basically than the scientific squad below, might I suggest that once you have your tinder bundle burning and you've put your dry twigs etc on top make sure you set your fire on a raft of small dryish finger thick sticks that act as a grate and allow air to pass between them and up into the heart of the fire. Then you build the fire as a teepee fire i.e all added fuel is placed on it's end and leaning into the middle to create the shape of a teepee.
Then keep adding more fuel to the outside of the teepee and in no time you'll have a rip roaring fire. The very shape of the teepee fire makes it's own chimney and helps draw the fire in conjunction with the stick grate at the bottom and you'd be suprised how well this chimney draws.
It's also useful if you're ever in a situation where you want to keep the smoke from your fire down to a minimum as this fire gets lots of air it burns hot and so gives off less smoke....the down side is that it uses up fuel quite quickly so it's best to change your fire once you get it going.

I light pretty well all my fires this way and then once I have a nice strong fire I change the fire to suit whatever I'm doing with it, trail fire, star fire, trench fire etc.

Hope that helps mate,

Bam.

 

[Wayland]

There's an old party trick which is quite fun if you've got some smokers about.

Challenge them to set a sugar cube burning. Very dificult normally.

Once everybody has given up, you can show them how.

First roll the sugar cube in cigarette ash and then it will light with a match or lighter.

Usually good for a pint wager that one.

 

[bambodoggy]

There's an old party trick which is quite fun if you've got some smokers about.

Challenge them to set a sugar cube burning. Very dificult normally.

Once everybody has given up, you can show them how.

First roll the sugar cube in cigarette ash and then it will light with a match or lighter.

Usually good for a pint wager that one.

Does it burn really hot and well? I only ask as being a smoker and a lover of hot chocolet I tend to have suger (but not cubes) and fag ash with me when I'm out...what I'm saying is would this combo make a good impro firelighter?

Cheers,

Bam.

 

[Wayland]

I wouldn't descibe it as a life saver. Just an interesting trick.