The main rule to remember when lighting a fire is to always start small and work your way up to a larger fire.
We recommend starting a fire with a good handful of kindling placed on top of firelighters or a good amount of paper.
Once the kindling is burning well then place a couple of small logs on top of the kindling, once this is alight then place further logs on the fire and sit back, relax and enjoy.
Something that we always do once the fire is alight in our stove, is to burn the fire hot and fast with the bottom damper full open and the main door shut for a minimum of 20 minutes, this helps to clean the glass after the fire has been shut down from the burn before and helps to clean out the soot up the chimney.
Wood Ash
Wood ash from your fire once cooled is a very good addition to your garden as the potash helps to promote better flowers and fruit of your plants, and a necessity if growing onions.
Please do not add this to your garden if you burn coal or mix it with the wood. Coal ash will not do your garden any favours.
Sweeping Chimneys
This is an annual and essential job.
The last thing anyone wants is a blocked chimney either by soot, old bird nests after the summer, broken bricks in old chimneys and believe it or not some customers have had dead animals in their chimneys.
We never get much more than a carrier bag full of soot out of ours, and this too is sparingly spread around the garden.