Angus -
congratulations on a beautiful Insert !
I have had a few wood burners and a gas fired insert..
What I always got was one with a big, clear ceramic, plate in the door, because ceramic lets the heat come through and you get to see what is going on in there easily..
Is yours going to be a straight wood burning, no other means of combustion insert ?
If you are going to be burning just wood and starting the fire yourself, I have years of experience there too..
Nothing beats outright heat like the hardest wood you can find in your area..
Hard, dry, wood will burn longer and give you the most heat..
I used to heat our house with an Insert in the Fireplace and it was wonderful..
You need 2 kinds of wood - soft wood to get the fire started and the box hot to get you a good draft, and then hardwood to put on the fire started after a bit, to keep it going a long time..
You will learn alot about how much air to give the box to regulate the burn and of course the corresponding heat output..
If you have a fan behind the box, that will really help get all the heat out of the Insert and into your living area.. If its on a thermostat, even better, remote control - score !!!
I cut down I dont know how many trees but probably close to 50 over the years for firewood for me and for sale, and to quote many people who do this - "There is no Cheap Cord of Wood".. And this is so true...
If you are going to either cut or get wood delivered, I would really impress upon the people that you really want a full cord of dry, seasoned, wood - especially the hard wood...
I built myself a set of wooden racks to put the wood into, measured out how long and high they needed to be and stacked split wood into them tightly to accurately know how much wood fit into a cord..
The racks were 4 x 4 x 8 to give me 128 cubic feet of wood, stacked tightly, very little light showing through..
You can stack it haphazardly and get less wood, but that is not what you want, right ?? It takes time but if you like to do this, its very good exercise and your hands and arms will be very strong after a season or 2 of doing this..
You will learn to look at wood differently, and will now notice very much the ends of the split or otherwise logs and look for dryness and checking, splits, etc., in the ends which indicates the amount of dryness at the center..
The more checking, splits, the better...
I would recommend always first, any red cedar for starting your fire - its absolutely the best, cleanest, smells great - my favorite..
Next - the pines which come with a certain amount of pitch in the middle which is absolutely a very good firestarter all by itself.. its like solid, semi-sticky lighter fluid...starts instantly and burns hot... be careful...
Hardwoods - dry, split, seasoned for a year, Oak, Maple, Ash, Hickory, give out the most heat and last the longest.. Other woods are ok if thats all you can get, but those 4 really rock...
If you have access to Eucalyptus, its pretty hard and has a lot of oil in it and burns very hot.. But its a bear to split because of the incredibly twisted grain pattern - you need a log splitter for this..
Almond - also burns nicely, has a lot of oil in it and burns hot, nice straight grain pattern..
Fruit trees - apple, burns ok, not really a hardwood, but its fine.. Smells great..
If you do this a lot and start to like it, perhaps chainsaws and log splitters will become your friends, and I have had and used many chainsaws and own a log splitter today that is at Roger's house...
I can talk much about chainsaws, cutting big trees, and splitting wood in a variety of ways, if you want..
Dan F
