Thrifty Fire Lighters for Woodburning Stoves etc

Okay, we all know that fuel bills are extortionate and there are more and more people switching to other types of heating and woodburning stoves in particular have seen a massive rise in popularity. This is the one we got installed last year;

And no, the fire surround is not made of wood as the fitters first thought! It is actually cast concrete that looks like wood and we bought it from the garden centre! This is a DRU stove 4.9kw, we were looking at a much larger one initially but the man who came to give us the quote told us that most people buy them too large and then only burn them at half capacity which is VERY bad for your stove and clogs up the pipe quickly. It was good advice! We have been burning ours at full capacity every time and our pipe is clean as a whistle.

Woodburning stoves are not cheap- ours was £800. There are ones out there waaaaaayyy cheaper but we wanted a cast iron one that we could burn day and night if necessary- they have these in Finland doing just that, so we think it was worth the money. It was £900 to get it installed- we did the fire surround ourselves according to the specifications the company gave us. It was a lot of money but probably the best thing we ever did! It has seen us through numerous powercuts, freezing temperatures and to cozy up in front of a real fire every winter evening is just priceless......mmmmm! Luckily we live in the middle of forests on all sides and those nasty January storms blew down a lot of trees, so that's the fuel for next winter already sorted! You do get through a lot of fuel though- if we were relying on bought wood, it is surprisingly expensive- even a small bag of SOFT WOOD (not even the longer burning hard wood!) from ALDI was nearly £4 this last winter, we were shocked at that. So be prepared if you are thinking of having a woodburner installed.

As you can see we have a flat top one (cast iron kettle £30) to cook on which we did do during the 4 day power outage in January this year. I would recommend a flat top one as it has come in so handy- I have even dried pine cones on it to use as firelighters!

Okay so on to the thrifting part.....cheap firelighters/fire starters. I bought quite a few boxes last year at £1.23 and just a few short months later they were up to nearly £1.50 a box, so I decided to do some research and then make my own......and here they are!

They are not super-attractive but they do work as well as the shop-bought firelighters. If you want to make some you will need;

Egg boxes

Cotton wool balls (make sure it is 100% cotton)

Petroleum Jelly (50p from the wholesalers)

Wax (I collect old bits of candles and use them)

An old pan

An old spoon

So use the old pan in a pan of boiling water to melt the wax in, this takes a while depending on the amount of wax that you have to melt! Take two or three cotton wool balls per egg box section and wipe each in the jar of petroleum jelly and put into the egg box section- just cram them in there, nice blob of the P.J. on each. Then once the wax has melted, use an old spoon to pour some wax on the top of each of them- this will help keep the cotton wool balls together and add some extra punch to your lighters. That's it! Thrifty recycled cheap-o firelighters that actually work and providing you burn your woodburning stove nice and high, will leave no residue on the stove pipe!

My last tip to you is to buy an Eco-fan;

These are expensive- about £90! But they spread the warm air from your stove throughout the house. Before we got ours, the area around the woodburning was roasting, now the whole 3 bed house is warm. They are a good investment. Look for a secondhand one on ebay, if you can get one!

Best Wishes to You and Yours

Alison X