How to make a good fire?

That seems an obvious questions which in practice is not always clear. Not everybody has experience in lighting fires or sometimes they have a stove which is difficult to light.

The first priority of a stove is that the fire burns easily and cleanly. It is the challenge to let the wood burn as complete as possible. A few aspects are important to achieve that goal: The wood, the way to light the fire and the air management in the stove.

You will see that it is really easy to do with a Stokem, it goes very quickly and therefore you can spontaneously decide to light up your Stokem at any time.

The wood

Of course you only use pure wood. Not painted wood, no impregnated wood and also no multiplex. In these types there are all sorts of chemicals that you do not want in the air.

Next to that the wood needs to be dry. Only dry wood can give a clean burn. If the wood is humid then a lot of heat will be lost in evaporating the water. Humid wood will always burn badly and create a lot of black smoke. Freshly cut wood has a humidity percentage of around 50%. Wood is suitable to be burned if this percentage is under 20%. Even better is 12% to 15%. To dry fresh cut wood you need at least a year for birch and two years for oak.

Buy dried wood with us: dried and stacked wood

How to light the fire

There are two ways to light the fire. The fast and smokey way and the slow and clean way. Our preference goes to the slow and clean way. This is called the Swiss method. With this method you stack the wood from big chunks at the bottom to kindling wood at the top. On top of these you lay 2 firelighters and you light them. First the kindling wood will catch fire and slowly the fire will expand downwards to light the bigger chunks.

Advantage of this method is that the stove will be pre heated to increase the draft in the stove. This will again improve the fire and make it burn more fierce.

Air control in the stove

During the start up phase the stove needs more oxygen. The Stokem door has an extra ‘kickstarter’ position which holds the door in a position that is not completely closed but leaves room for extra air to pass through. This creates a tornado effect inside the Stokem which creates extra oxygen and turbulence that helps the combustion when starting up.

Let the stove heat up this way and by the time that most of the kindling wood have burned you can add one or two fresh logs and close the door. Now the stove is warm, the fire is going and you can enjoy the warmth and playful flames.