If your are a scout, an outdoor person, a wood stove owner or just want to make a good summer camp bonfire this ho to do guide will help your firing up instantly with minimized pollution and smoke.
🔥In short: Every fire is the right chemical mixture of air, high temperature and some stuff burnable; a.k.a. as the fire triangle.
🔥 A proper fire burns with clear flame and clear smoke.
🔥 When the temperature is right (read as high enough) the wood stove is self-cleaning and leaves no black slam in the chimney and hence only little ashes.
Using these three secrets its easy for you to make a good reliable bonfire.
Use only dry clean wood for your fire.
No goes are: all kind of plastic, painted wood, flamingo or similar garbage. They make a terrible pollution due to its content of chemical.
Guide
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- If firing up in a indoor fire place: First open top exhaust valves and lower air inlet valves. Open air inlet in your house or apartment.
- Then make a base of big pieces of wood in the bottom of your fireplace.
In old days you didn’t do that but the big pieces of wood becomes preheated and burns better later on. If you do this in your wood fire stove, make sure air can blow upwards from below.
If you place it something like 3 cm distance between the wood pieces it both reflect the heat to each other but also make space for fresh air and outlet from the combustion. - Then add thinner pieces called kindle to the top.
- In wood stoves you open op all valves, particular the exhaust valve, before igniting.
- Ignite at the top, so only the warm gasses burns.
This minimize pollution and over smoking.
Its the gasses that burns not the wood itself. So to say: the wood evaporate as gas when it becomes warm. - If you are in a outdoor nature camp shelter with covered bonfire – as in the wood stove we want to raise the temperature as much as possible as fastest as possible under controlled combustion.
Temperature goes up about 400-700 degrees Celsius. - Give full throttle for about 30 – 60 min to make convection and avoid reverse drag in the chimney or air around you. If you live in an apartment in the ground floor of a high block and fire up as the only one in a cold chimney, you might risk a resistance of cold air act as a lid until you have heated up the chimney. You then risk smoke blow back indoor in your room.
- After the initial heat-up you may close some of the valves. Never close exhaustion outlet more than 75%.
- When giving a bit of fresh air from below, your wood last about 25% longer and minimize pollution due to better combustion.
- Always makes sure a ventilation valve is open for fresh air intake to your house/flat/room where your wood fire stove.
Read your wood burners manual for further instruction and always follow your local authorities and regulations.
Avoid over-smoking: Use dry wood, fresh air from below and raise up the burning temperature. Don not stay indoor here. Very dangerous!
Warning for carbon monoxide pollution: You can see the smoke but not the carbon monoxide. Its odourless, tasteless, colourless flammable gas which occur at bad burning and too little convection in the chimney. CO2 glue to the oxygen in your blood and instantly takes the command. First you might become dizzy, then you might fall in sleep. If you are lucky someone find you – otherwise …
A carbon monoxide alarm can help protecting your life.
And a smoke detector as well!
Technical spoken: the air we breath contains app. 78 % Nitrogen, 21 % Oxygen and then Argon and other minor content of gasses. What makes the wizard for the bonfire is the Oxygen.
