If your wood hisses and water or vapour escapes at the ends of the piece, your wood is soaked or freshly cut. Do not use this wood in your stove. Large amounts of creosote could be deposited in your chimney, creating potential conditions for a chimney fire.
THE FIRST FIRES
The fresh paint on your stove needs to be cured to preserve its quality. Once the fuel charge is properly ignited, only burn small fires in your stove for the first four hours of operation. Never open the air control more than necessary to achieve a medium burn rate.
Make sure that there’s enough air circulation while curing the stove. The odours could be smelled during the 3 or 4 first fires. Never start your stove outside. You will not be able to see if you are over heating.
IGNITION
After making sure that the stove air intake controls are fully open, place several rumpled sheets of paper in the centre of the combustion chamber. Place 8 to 10 pieces of small dry kindling wood over the paper in the form of a tent. You may also place a few pieces of heating wood, but choose the smaller ones. No chemical product should be used to light the fire.
Before igniting the paper and kindling wood, it is recommended that you warm up the chimney. This is done in order to avoid back draft problems often due to negative pressure in the house. If such is the case, open a window slightly near the stove and twist together a few sheets of newspaper into a torch. Light up this paper torch and hold it as close as possible to the mouth of the pipe inside the combustion chamber to warm up the chimney. Once the updraft movement is initiated, you are ready to ignite the stove by lighting the paper and kindling wood inside the combustion chamber.
We therefore advise you to leave the door slightly opened (1/4") for a 10 to 30 minutes period, under supervision, in order to allow for good combustion. After this time, you must close the door and progressively adjust the air control to obtain the desired temperature.
HEATING
Controlled combustion is the most efficient technique for wood heating because it enables you to select the type of combustion you want for each given situation. The wood will burn slowly if the wood stove air intake control is adjusted to reduce the oxygen supply in the combustion chamber to a minimum. On the other hand, wood will burn quickly if the air control is adjusted to admit a larger quantity of oxygen in the combustion chamber.
Real operating conditions may give very different results than those obtained in the lab according to the species of wood used, it's moisture content, the size and density of the pieces, the length of the chimney, altitude and outside temperature.
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