Just purchased the above, a decent Scandinavian stove i’m told. Anyone with advice on the lighting method, i’m told the “top down” method is the one to use, to get a good draw from the flue. Would be interested from the more experienced please.
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I just load up with scrunched up paper then put kindling on top and light the paper. Open the vents fully for couple of minutes until it gets going then throw a few bigger bits of wood on and close vents a bit.
Let it warm up slowly as giving it bigheat straight away can buckle or crack the burner if one part gets too hot too quickly.
Regards
Rob.
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Depends if lighting wood or coal, with coal everything open until it gets going, with wood top fully open bottom about 1/2 way (Stovax)
We allow it to heat up as slowly as possible, and keep it going for weeks sometimes. As for lighting it, I’ve used firelighters, white spirit, a blowtorch, kindling, basically anything that’s easily combustible. 10 years with no issues, flue cleaned every summer.
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+1 for fire lighters. We tend to use both wood and coal. We start with a ring of coal around a firlelighter which we light and then put kindling on the top of then coal on top and once going either add more coal of logs. Wood seems to get the stove hotter faster but obviously doesn’t last as long.
We have a couple of stove fans on the top, and we leave the bottom door fully open, then when the fans start to turn we close the door and just crack the lower vent slightly to keep it going.
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This time of year I’ve found warming the flue first with a decent amount of scrunched paper helps the fire draw. After that never needed firelighters or anything other than paper, kindling and logs/coal. Best way to heat the house in my opinion, lovely 
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Believe it or not - dryer lint, handful of wood shavings if I’ve been making stuff, kindling, small split log. I tend to think that having a bit of ash in the grate helps direct the heat up into the pile, too. Whack the vents wide open until it’s well alight, then turn it down, add a log, and toast yourself.
First fire of the winter for us last night - glorious!
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The OP is using wood.
The usual thing is newspaper or firelighters, kindling, small logs, big logs, open air to max and light it.
I must say I’ve never heard of the top down method. I’d just try it.
In fact I will. We’ve just built a new house and the stove, as yet unlit, was only installed about 10 days ago. It’s a Charnwood Skye 5 so if anyone has any experience of that, it would be interesting.
My stove experience has been mostly with boat stoves. It’s common for boaters to shut the air right down to keep the stove in overnight. This can be a dangerous practice if the flue is leaky because starving the stove of air makes it inefficient and it produces proportionately more CO.
New stoves now are generally “Ecodesign ready” and “Defra approved” for use in smokeless areas. All stoves sold from next year IIRC will have to meet the Ecodesign standard. An aspect of achieving the efficiency and low emissions to meet these standards is that they can’t be turned right down such that they will burn overnight. Another consequence is that the minimum heat they can produce has gone up. The first 5kW stove I chose would only go down to 3kW, which I was concerned might actually be too much in a very well insulated house. The nominally 5kW Charnwood spec states it can produce from 2 to 7 kW.
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We have two (different designs) and for both we use bottom up, always have. I used to use paper and kindling to start, but transferred over to fire lighters a couple of years ago. Wouldn’t go back now.
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Thanks to all, some interesting replies, especially the use of two fans. To John M: my stove is a Heta 45 (Danish) If you go on You Tube and put in how to light a Heta 45 stove, you will come across the “top down method”. It seems to be the scandinavian method. I will try both way’s. 
Interesting. I thought it might be the Australian method:)
That’s a nice modern-looking stove BYW. Not unlike my new Charnwood and the store stand version is a similar size.
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Tried the top down method after buying a new Charnwood stove last year. Seems to work much better as it heats the flue quicker. A couple of small logs on the old ash, one small piece of firefighter then about 8 to 10 pieces of kindling criss-crossed and away it goes every time. Leave the door slightly open for about half an hour, adding a larger log after 15/20 minutes. The stove fan starts spinning after about 5 minutes so the temperature obviously rises pretty quickly.
Speaking of log burners, it’s been very wild here in Northumberland. Lots and lots of trees down and flying debris, including roof tiles, though thankfully, our house was pretty unscathed, apart from a section of fencing that was easily put back up. Don’t remember anything quite as bad as this, or at least not for a very long time. Power went down early on Friday evening and only just back a little while ago (Sunday at 5pm). Water now off though. Luckily, the log burner provided a dual role of heating and making tea, toast and even heating up chilli yesterday evening (Saturday).
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Are these still legal?..I thought they were being phased out as they contribute to global warming and child death. Sounds a load of rubbish to me but am sure I read it somewhere?
Mine was installed by myself a few years ago and has a certificate from the local council saying it’s compliant and I have no intention of ripping it out. It’s no longer legal to sell “wet” logs (i.e. unseasoned with a moisture content of more than 20%) since Feb 21st this year; this is because they don’t burn well and put out a lot more smoke.
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A good move - Morso? I installed two squirrel 1410 stoves about 7-8 years ago’; one of the best moves I have ever made. These only have 5 inch flues, as that was the widest that would fit up the 1970 chimney liners, but burn perfectly. Took me at least three years to perfect the burn. Idea is to get to optimum heat as quickly as possible for a clean, efficient, sootless burn. Six scrunched up pages of the other halves Daily Mirror; only thing that paper is useful for, dried thin stick kindling on top(currently sycamore), a bit of old bark on top of that and then two rows(2 + 2) of thinner logs(3/4" to 2 inch).
Bottom up has always worked well for me.
Yes, I build a “Jenga” type square stack of chopped wood over a small piece of fire lighter and usually place some cardboard over that. Then put progressively larger pieces of wood on top.
Never fails!
Logs are renewable in general, certainly at the scale that they are used domestically… Particulates seem to be the problem, even with the new Ecodesign and DEFRA standards, both as a contributor to outdoor pollution and in the stove owners’ homes. I’ll take my chance, I want something there that works in a power cut!
I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up being banned in some cities or large urban areas in the coming years.
My local pub chucks logs on the fire, they are any old thing chopped locally.
Smell lovely when you walk through an old village and you smell that log fire.
They should concentrate on what China/India/Russia/North Korea are doing to the environment nevermind what’s burning at the Bull and Bush.
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Tried top down for the first time last night, wood only and it worked!
I burn wood & smokeless coal in my Squirrel, so will try again with a layer of coal at the bottom and wood on top and see if that works better than my usual tactic of coal chucked in once there’s a base of wood embers.
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I was surprised to hear on tv interviews post storm Arwen power cuts that folk in the regions of Scotland seem to be in a bad way because they rely entirely on electricity for heating and cooking.
I’ve always insisted we have at least one other way of heating, for at least part of the house. We have gas central heating but that would go off in a power cut. However we have an old fashioned gas fire in the lounge which needs no mains electricity and I fitted a wood burner at the other end of the house eight years ago (which has solved a condensation problem this bungalow used to suffer from).
We had a winter power cut here thirty two years ago after heavy snow brought down power cables all the way back to the power stations on the Trent. We were off grid for eight days. We couldn’t get petrol because the garages couldn’t pump it. The local shops closed because they had no power either and relied totally on electric tills and couldn’t cope without. The gas fire kept us warm enough and we cooked just about the entire contents of our freezer using a charcoal barbecue. We lit the house using candles in the early evening and went to bed early!
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