Lighting a fire in a fire place can be tricky business sometimes, especially if you don’t really know what you are doing.
In our house we have a free standing fire place that holds about 4 to 5 pieces of firewood at a time, this is adequate for heating most of the house during the colder months (Not that it gets too cold on the Brisbane Northside).
Since we have been here I have pretty much been able to get the fire to start first time every time, also on the relight too when there is only hot coals sitting down the bottom of the fireplace from the night or day before, if you use the same process as below to get the fire back up and running again this also works well.
What do you need to start a fire in a fireplace ::
- Kindling, we use dried sticks and branches from our garden’s trees for this, kindling is generally small cut up pieces of the timber you use for burning or in some cases people use a quicker burning timber for kindling.
- Pinecones or some other similar kind of fire starter, I generally use pine cones but you can use kindling only if you want.
- Firewood, a smaller piece at first and also bigger pieces for later after the fire has started.
- Lighter or matches, to start the fire.
4 Steps to Starting a Fire in your Fire Place ::
1. Place the 8 pine cones as per the picture below, so leaving a gap between them, I generally use the latest newspaper delivered for the paper source, scrunch up one page and place in between the pine cones, as you can see I have three pieces in this gap, note also, not wise to use the glossy type of junk mail you get delivered everyday to your mail box in Brisbane, these don’t burn that great and just create a lot more ash in your fire, so best throwing those into the recycle bin.
2. Kindling time now, just a thin layer across the top of the base you have just laid, the aim is not to have everything squashed in tight as this stops the oxygen moving through the fire base, as we know you need oxygen to keep the fire going, so a gap here and there is better for the fire starting process and also when you blow slightly on the bottom of the fire later on this makes the starting process easier too, as you can see I have only use about 8 pieces of kindling on top.
3. Next step in the fire starting process was about 3 more sheets of news paper on top, light scrunched up, then I put about 4 more pieces of kindling on top of that and finally 1 piece of the bigger firewood on top.
4. Put the fire place control on to the highest burn setting, take your lighter, light as many pieces of paper at the front as you can, the paper should take and so should the pine cones too, pine cones are little balls of flame too, they are great fire starters, after a short period the fire should erupt with the kindling taking up the flame and burning and finally the bigger bit of firewood should start to burn too, then all you have to do is add on the bigger bits of firewood, adjust the setting down a bit to suit, pull up a chair and a mug of hot chocolate and read what’s left of the paper.
There you have it, this is the way I start the fire in the fire place pretty much every time, also, if you are looking for fire wood in Brisbane or specifically fire wood on the Northside of Brisbane, which I found to be not to easy to get someone to deliver without paying a small fortune for delivery, you can have a read here about it, Firewood in Brisbane.
I hope the above will help you and your family stays warm and toasty through the winter months.
