This week I "discovered" a different way to start a fire in my Biomass 25 and it takes about 5 minutes start to finish! With the storage I have, in the winter I fire the boiler once a day for 3 or 4 hours to burn a load of wood, so every day I start from scratch.
What I just started doing was to shut down the blower before the bed of coals are gone so the next day I have a couple of inches of charcoal in the bottom of the loading chamber.
So when I start a fire what I do is rake the coals around to level them off. Then I throw a crumpled up newspaper on top of the bed of charcoal (no kindling wood!), light it and turn the blower on with the bypass DISENGAGED and the loading door opened a bit so the flames are sucked down through the coals lighting them. Once the charcoal is burning, which takes about a minute I put wood on top of the burning bed of charcoal, preferably with a flat side down directly over the nozzle and then fill the loading chamber with as much wood as I need for the day, shut the door and walk away.
Today I was done in less than 5 minutes with gassification starting almost immediately. I have even done this with only a few pieces of charcoal by laying a couple strips of bark and a piece of corrugated cardboard on top if the charcoal and a piece of newspaper on top.
Has anybody else ever tried this?
What I just started doing was to shut down the blower before the bed of coals are gone so the next day I have a couple of inches of charcoal in the bottom of the loading chamber.
So when I start a fire what I do is rake the coals around to level them off. Then I throw a crumpled up newspaper on top of the bed of charcoal (no kindling wood!), light it and turn the blower on with the bypass DISENGAGED and the loading door opened a bit so the flames are sucked down through the coals lighting them. Once the charcoal is burning, which takes about a minute I put wood on top of the burning bed of charcoal, preferably with a flat side down directly over the nozzle and then fill the loading chamber with as much wood as I need for the day, shut the door and walk away.
Today I was done in less than 5 minutes with gassification starting almost immediately. I have even done this with only a few pieces of charcoal by laying a couple strips of bark and a piece of corrugated cardboard on top if the charcoal and a piece of newspaper on top.
Has anybody else ever tried this?