It's not supposed to get above 36F in the next week or so, so I decided it was time to fire the wood boiler. It can get really difficult to run when the temperatures are above 40. The boiler is totally foolproof to start. Either that, or I have gotten better at starting fires with a few years of practice. Since it was extremely difficult to get the hang of it when I first started learning on our old wood stove in Colorado, I figured I'd post my tried and true procedure here in visual form in the hopes of helping someone else out.

Here's the maw of the beast. The "teeth" are the underside of the heat exchanger where the water travels through the boiler to get er... "boiled" by the fire before heading out to the radiators in the rest of the house.



Old black coals from previous fires are OK in any amount. Some white ash is OK but there can't be a thick bed of that as it is no longer flammable and will suffocate the fire. This boiler has a grate through which white ash can be pressed and it collects in a removable tray underneath. That's what the other, bottommost door is for, to remove the ashes once every 2-3 days. I find two is better than three. I think having sufficient airspace underneath the fire helps. 



To start the fire first I take a large scoop of shredded paper. The picture above shows the huge garbage can that holds the paper. It has a tight fitting lid to keep all the flammables contained between uses. I stockpile lawn bags of shredded paper during the year for refills so I don't run out over the winter. Prime harvest time for paper shreds is between the new year and tax time! The "scoop" is a medium sized saucepan. Having a scoop is ideal because moving the paper manually results in tiny bits of paper all over everything. I try to avoid spreading flammables all over in an uncontrollable fashion :-p



Next  I place a few pieces of the smallest tinder wood on top. This can be anything from sticks or big splinters to the smallest pieces of scrap lumber. Firewood of all kinds needs to be very, very dry. We store ours indoors with a dehumidifier running.



Light the paper underneath the low ends of the wood in 3-4 different spots, as shown. Leave the door open until the small pieces of wood are "fully engaged" in the fire which means they are each individually lit on fire. This should be a matter of less than a minute.

At this point, quickly add 2-3 pieces of each increasing size of wood, closing the door between each addition and adding more when each new size is fully engaged. Again this should be a fairly quick process.

Once enough medium sized stuff has turned to red coals, they can be crunched up and the smaller full size logs put in on top. You want 2-3 inches of coals.



Here's a picture of the fire running well with smaller full-size logs on. Unfortunately the flash somewhat overpowers the coals but the entire mass underneath is all glowing bright orange like an electric range burner on the 12 setting. At this point, every time the existing wood has burnt enough to be shrunken somewhat in bulk, I push them to the back and add 1-2 more big ones in front leaning on the back pile. The above picture shows the old logs pushed back but before the new ones have been added.

As a note one would ordinarily peek at the fire through the little window provided to see how it's doing. I show the door wide open because it's easier to take a picture that way ;-)



Unfortunately the bottom air flap was not closing fully with the new gasket in place. If you remember from my entry on the subject of gasket replacement, I did think the gasket I had was too big for this door and it turns out that was the case. In the picture above it can be seen that even with the chain fully relaxed, something was preventing the door from falling all the way closed.



This is another angle that better shows the relaxation of the control chain that the boiler uses to open and close its door as needed. 

Because the door wouldn't close all the way, that meant it was impossible to choke the fire down when it was getting too hot. This resulted in the boiler being unable to maintain the requested water temperature without the heat running away. So on the advice of my dear (much more boiler-proficient) Spouse I took my trusty monster needlenose and ripped the too-thick gasket out until such a time as I can obtain the smaller size. Once able to close properly the boiler maintained the correct heat quite nicely.

In other, only somewhat related news, I had to replace the light bulb in the wood room today. With this replacement this means there are only 2 non-fluorescent lights left in the basement. This basement is an ideal spot for compact fluorescents because when I am here alone they get turned on once in the morning and off once at night. Very low impact for the little guys. What will not be low impact will be if I slam a piece of firewood into that one in the wood room.



Reaffirm note to self: get light bulb cage for wood room.

Reaffirm other note to self: repair wood room ceiling.