[Closed] I had the T5, I had the Gaggia, now I have the woodburner. How do I work it?

Easy, sack it off, turn on 3 bar electric fire with fan. Don't use it on an extension lead into the bathroom.

As a T5, Gaggia and woodburner owner heres what we do (and have done with the last 4 woodburners we've owned).

To light:
- layer of smokeless/coal in the bottom
- jenga of kindling on top with a firelighter in the middle.
- stove "open"
- light it and once going, shove a log on top and close the door

Thats usually enough to get it going really well. Sometimes if its cold/wet then the door needs to be left ajar for a bit. Also, our last stove had an exposed flue which ran out the house wall and then all the way up the outside of the house whilst everything else we've had including the current one is inside in a chimney breast. The external flue needed a lot more work to get going as the flue needed warming a bit first to generate a draw and certainly wasn't as "chuck it all on and light it" friendly as the others were.

Once going, closing the stove let if burn (whatever the fuel was) slow, open it should get it roaring pretty much straight away.

Not sure about your starter pile on top, but nevermind, once it's lit, it's lit. I use both vents to get it going, then shut down the bottom vent and just run it on the top/heated air vent. That will then moderate the heat all the way up to whatever needed.

If you can't get the fan on and the stove easily over 200c then there must be something wrong with the fuel.

If you are burning wood, you should close the bottom vent fully once it is at operating temperature as wood burns from above (the opposite way around if burning coal etc).

Wood only here but in a multifuel stove (Clearview).
Lighting with the [brilliant] upside down method:
2 logs on the bottom
Small firelighter (or something) on top of those logs
A few sticks and then 2 more logs on top

(this method allows you to light the stove and then not have to open the door for quite some time)

Open all vents and light firelighter - almost close the door but not quite.
After a couple of mins, when the fire is raging, close the door.
After 5-10 mins close the air from below and start closing the air from above.

If you keep the bottom vent open all the time you're just pushing the heat up the flue and the stove itself won't heat up properly - a bit like having an open fire.

Try closing the vents until you get a 'lazy' flame floating around the firebox - this is efficient.

(all the above assumes dry wood - coal can be added once the fire's going properly.)

Have you swept the flue?

Most wood burning stoves and multi-fuel stoves have a bottom air vent and a top air vent. Wood burns best with a good bed of ash laid down in the bottom of the stove and an air supply from the top.

When lighting your stove, open both air vents fully. On initially lighting, it can be an advantage to crack the door open slightly to provide additional air flow through the firebox. Once the fire is established, close the door and then close down the bottom air vent gradually. If the fire dies right down at this point, open the bottom vent slightly for a bit longer until the fire is better established.

Once the fuel in the stove is burning properly, the temperature of the stove can be controlled using the top air vent. This can be quite an art to get this setting right. If the top vent is open fully, the fire may look good and as if it is burning fiercely, however, you will get through a lot of wood fuel and a lot of the heat will disappear up the flue. The idea is to throttle the top vent down until the wood is burning with a nice steady flame without dying down or burning fiercely. This reduces the flue temperature and gets the firebox as hot as possible, which then radiates heat into your room. Some wood burning aficionados will fit a magnetic flue thermometer so that they can monitor the flue temperature. The flue temperature needs to be hot enough to carry the fumes up the flue but being too hot is a sign that you are losing heat.

From here

Some wood burning aficionados will fit a magnetic flue thermometer so that they can monitor the flue temperature watch the temperature rise uncontrollably with all vents fully closed, until the thermometer needle hits the end stop...

FIFY

I agree with leaving the door slightly ajar until fully lit.

Sounds to me like your wood might be a bit too damp.

sounds complex.

yeoman CL3, chuck a firelighter and some kindling in, couple of logs on top.

leave both vents open until its going and then close the bottom one when i remember or it races through the wood in no time at all. fan usually takes about 15mins to get going.

Never burn wood and coal/anthracite together, the acid produced will destroy the liner or chimney and shorten the life of the stove considerably.
Yes it's a multi fuel but only burn one or the other, read the instructions with the stove.
You can obviously get the smokeless going with some dry kindling.

Where is WorldClassAccident and a can of petrol?

As above, don't mix coal/smokeless, and wood.

Mine was multifuel but so much better when I found a conversion kit to make it wood only and increase the space for logs by about 25% (remove the grid, ashpan and riddler, adds panels below the firebricks)

My two pence - whenever I've had trouble getting a decent temperature, its always damp wood. Burns with lots of flame but imnability to reduce airflow and increase heat is typical. Also, depending on the stove, you may not want the bottom vent completely closed...depending on outside weather, I sometimes need to leave my lower vent open a fraction.

Meh retro, heat pumps where’s it’s at 🙂

Wood only here. First step all wood must be under 20% moisture. I prefer smaller 'cobble' sized pieces of wood. I'd rather load up with a few smaller bits than one of two bigger logs. More surface area etc. So I put say 3 'cobbles' on the bottom of the stove, then Jenga up a tower of kindling and use a wood wool fire lighter to start. Top vent open fully until roaring then slowly close vent when flue temp guage gets into the optimum burn zone. Add more cobbles and open vent fully until new wood has caught.

If you want more heat out of it, try using heat logs.
Pini-kay are the best, throw out so much more heat than log logs.
I stopped buying them because of the plastic wrapping but you can now buy them in cardboard boxes.
I am not sure if the plastic just gets removed and they get put in a cardboard box though.
Not sure what I'll do next winter, not comfortable with using all that plastic but my house is freezing and I need to at least try to stay warm. I'm hoping to have moved by then to be honest but who knows.

Heatlogs seem a very expensive way of buying timber...and I can't imagine they give the output of a decent log. Good for short term use if the OP has no dry timber through.

I bought some compressed sawdust style logs and they did not last long in the fire at all.

if you've got central heating, use that.

Otherwise, are you using kiln dried wood?

And I think you'll find that the combination of T5, Gaggia and Woodburner is only allowed in Peebles.

Real men and women don't use firelighters

A stove is only as good as the fuel quality, we use compressed wood waste blocks a 900kg pallet is the log equivalent of nearly 4 cubic metres. They are denser than wood and are 4% moisture, less water = more heat, they burn hotter and for longer. We are retired and have the stove on every day we're about halfway through a pallet. 5kw stove.
I have used stoves since 1985 and spent 8 years fitting them and have tried hundreds out. Oh yes and we haven't emptied the ash pan yet because the burn is so efficient there is virtually no ash from approximately 400kg of fuel.

Thanks all.

Have you swept the flue?

Previous owners did it in September

As above, don’t mix coal/smokeless, and wood

I didn't know that, noted

Real men and women don’t use firelighters

Damn straight

Sounds to me like your wood might be a bit too damp.

Could be, it's just what the previous lot left. Nearly all gone now, so need to get some more, which brings me to...

we use compressed wood waste blocks a 900kg pallet is the log equivalent of nearly 4 cubic metres.

Tell me more...

I struggle with long sentences but key question is whether you have a decent metal chimney liner?

We had a Clearview SuperMutha stove professionally installed and it ran like a dog.
In the end he put a proper metal liner in and it was transformed.