Tip for reducing smoke when firing heat commander from cold

[sleewok]

Since I have had my heat commander it has always been a struggle to get it to light without smoking out my basement. I finally found a solution.

Open the door for the ash tray and put your starter wood on top of the grate. Light it and leave the door cracked and close it once the starter is well lit. Let it heat and then add wood once the light is blinking . This has completely solved my issues with smoke while starting.

Hope this helps someone!

 

[EbS-P]

Have you tried a top down fire?

 

[sleewok]

Have you tried a top down fire?

Yes

 

[stoveliker]

And is your wood dry enough?
I don't know what your appliance needs in terms of max moisture content to work well, but have you tried a partial load of 2x4 cut offs? If that doesn't smoke upon start up, that suggests to me that at least part of the issue was "failure to thrive" due to moisture content being too high.

 

[Gearhead660]

Do you preheat the flue to get a good draft going? I have the older sibling(Tundra 2) and would get a little smoke out the secondary intakes on a stone cold start. Would just run the propane torch through the clean out door to preheat.

 

[Highbeam]

I use the propane torch to heat the flue every time before starting my standard bottom up fires. It’s so dang fast and easy. Once you get the little fingertip ignition torch you’ll throw your matches away.

 

[travis8352]

Ill be trying this for my first fire of the year! Half the time i smoke the basement out.

 

[sloeffle]

Ran into that problem sometimes with my Caddy. I would religiously light some tightly wound paper on fire and put it in the baro to warm the chimney up. Like me, I think you are getting smoked out because the chimney isn't warm and not drawing yet.

 

[travis8352]

Ran into that problem sometimes with my Caddy. I would religiously light some tightly wound paper on fire and put it in the baro to warm the chimney up. Like me, I think you are getting smoked out because the chimney isn't warm and not drawing yet.

Thats a good idea! Once time i used a hairdryer to warm my stovepipe and that worked great but then last time i lit my head commander i used a propane torch and i smoked the basement out. Not an issue to me as holding the torch in tjr firebox got the wood lit up good and it started pulling right away.

 

[Micdrew]

I had this problem when dealing with a cold chimney. Top down lite works every time however I always make sure that it’s very small wood chips with a small chunk of fire starter brick to get things going, the trick is to get a small fire going that produces very little smoke once it’s lit I keep the door cracked slightly.

 

[brenndatomu]

Since I have had my heat commander it has always been a struggle to get it to light without smoking out my basement. I finally found a solution.

Open the door for the ash tray and put your starter wood on top of the grate. Light it and leave the door cracked and close it once the starter is well lit. Let it heat and then add wood once the light is blinking . This has completely solved my issues with smoke while starting.

Hope this helps someone!

I use the ash drawer door on my Kuuma too...just crack it a bit, build a small fire of super dry wood noodles and pretty small pieces of pine kinlin built in a pyramid shape over the ash grate...drop one match on it and the fire generally takes off fast and clean...then load wood around/over it, close the loading door and wait for the computer to take over...close ash drawer up and walk away...quick and usually pretty smokeless.
Spring and fall I do quite a few of what are basically cold starts (no coals to load on) once real winter hits it basically just rake coals, load n go.