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Seasoned wood will
produce less soot than green. Hardwood produces much
less soot than pine, etc.
To season cut wood,
stack it where it can be left for a long time. You
probably want to have it up off the soil, perhaps on
some cement blocks, bricks, or the like. Rotten wood
just isn't a nice thing!
If you want the
seasoning process to work faster, you can water the
wood pile. If in a great hurry, soak the logs in hot
water, and then dry them near the fire. This
process, hot soaking and drying, is reportedly used
to season wood that is going to be used for making
things.
When I had a fireplace,
I was sometimes able to get a lot of the soot to
fall down by clanging the flue when the chimney was
cold. I just sort of slapped that handle back and
forth so that I could hear a vibration echo up the
chimney.
I don't know it if is
helpful, but the combination of geese and a soot
problem reminds me of something I read about in an
historic novel. The mother in the story instructed
her son to bring a vigorous goose into the house.
She shoved the goose up the chimney, and as it
clambered/flew to the top to escape, it cleaned the
chimney. Afterward, an agitated, soot-fouled goose
was making her displeasure known in the barnyard,
and the son was busied gathering wood for the next
steps in spring cleaning -- making lye soap
and boiling the bed linens.
A method I do NOT
recommend is to fire a pistol up the chimney; the
idea is that the vibrations will shake the soot
loose. I'm also leery of the method of inserting a
flaming splint up the chimney to burn out the soot.
It probably does get rid of the soot, but chimney
fires are dangerous, because they can get out of
control. If you can get onto the roof, the method
of lowering a bag of bricks down the chimney by rope
seems much safer. In this approach, you would use an
up-and-down motion to scrub the inside of the pipe.
Be aware that most chimneys have secured caps to
prevent roof fires.
So, there are three
known categories of chimney-cleaning. Vibrations to
shake the soot loose; friction from a panicked
goose, a chimney-sweep's brushes, or the lowered bag
of bricks; and burning the stuff out.
To reduce the amount of
soot that forms, it has been suggested that holding
a burning stick or roll of newspaper just below the
flue can pre-warm the chimney. It is presumed taht
more soot forms if the first smoke passes through a
cold chimney pipe. This pre-warming method is also
siad to improve the draw from the beginning. And of
course, you can then take the remnant of the burning
brand and use that to light your well-laid fire.
My finding is that
starting with a well-laid fire is more efficient in
the long run. If you pile the most combustible
material (mostly household waste paper) at the
bottom, with sufficient kindling laid across the
grate, and then successive of small to not-quite
small logs above that, you can save a lot of
trouble. As the paper catches fire, the splints,
splits and bark bits are warmed and as they catch,
the smallest logs become warmed, and so on. I think
this helps to reduce soot when using green or
incompletely seasoned wood, because I could see the
sap boiling out the ends of green logs. Once such a
fire is going well, it will need little tending
except to add more fuel.
Leaping flames do NOT
denote a hot fire. The hottest fire is one where the
combustion is mostly in the glowing embers on the
underside of the logs. I found that if a fire began
to cool, I could keep it going, not by "stirring",
but by scraping a few embers from the bottom of the
logs, and perhaps adding just a bit more kindling. I
would also use the prod to push the ashes to the
sides to make sure there was a bit of air under the
burning part, but not too much. The hottest fire
needs a bit of air, but not too much.
I have purchased
firewood, but I never had to purchase any extra
kindling beyond the small carton of it my first
vendor provided with the logs. I gathered all my
fallen twigs, all the bark that would readily peel
from my trees, and any unburned bits left from
previous fires. I also collected pine cones. The
scales of a pinecone will burn quickly, leaving a
core that burns slow and hot. Dry cones are great
for re-kindling a dying fire, or to widen the area
of embers on the underside of the logs.
And of course, I saved
the paper waste. A single sheet of newspaper can be
torn to strips or rolled into a tube. Cartons from
cold breakfast cereal can be torn into strips for
tinder, or can be filled with smaller scraps of
paper as a portion of the kindling layer.
Many things can be
burned. Some weedy plants have woody stems left in
the cold months. Cotton rags can also be burned. You
can safely burn a few wax-coated paper cups, but
don't inhale the smoke. Color-printed
papers, particularly magazine pages and gift wrap,
are obtained with a vast array of chemicals, and
emit all sorts of disagreeable things in the fumes.
However, for fun, you could drop a tiny bit in, and
observe the interesting colors of the flames.
Wood ashes can be added
to the compost pile, but not too much at once. Layer
small amounts of ashes with other garden wastes. If
your dogs want to dig where they should not, wood
ashes can be put into the holes and then covered
with a bit of dirt to keep them from blowing/washing
away. You can minimize the areas that are barren of
grass from dog wastes by applying wood ashes. Lilies
enjoy a bit of wood ash dug in near the roots.
And of course, wood ash
was the traditional source of lye for soap making.
While it sounds like a very harsh product to apply
to the skin, lye soaps are sold as glycerin soap,
and when the balance of lye and fat is correct,
there is no lye left in the soap -- it is completely
absorbed into the new chemical compound that is
gentle to the skin. It is difficult to measure the
strength of lye made from ashes, and thus some
home-made soaps had too much lye for the volume of
fat used. That's no reason not to make a bit of home
made soap from wood lye for the learning experience,
and use it for laundry or dishes.
And don't forget, wood
ashes sprinkled around could deter those foxes from
stealing your chooks. Wild creatures distrust fire,
and even a faint smell will inspire second thought
about approaching human habitations, no matter how
tender and juicy the chook dinners look. "Better a
small wild bird or rodent in peace, than a fat
domesticated fowl and a singed tailbrush."
Fires can be lots of
fun, appealing to the deepest part of our natures,
so have fun, but be careful and be safe.
Rose B, mother of three,
in NC
(North Carolina, USA)
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