Natural Firestarter
How hot is a fire?
How hot is fire | An important question.
How hot is fire, a question that needs to be answered.
The heat generated by fire will depend on the type of fuel being used.
Further, the purpose of the fire will have a bearing on the required temperature.
This brief article aims to outline how hot a fire is in a number of applications.
Importantly, you can roughly gauge how hot a fire is by the colour of the flame produced.
Colour of flames in a fire | A guide to temperature
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- Deep red flames | usually a fire with such flames is between 600-800 ℃
- Orange or yellow flames suggest temperatures of around 1100℃
- White flames are hotter at around 1300-1500℃ (white hot)
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The following handy chart, courtesy of hearth.com, shows this in a handy colour coded format. This one is specifically for metals but is similar across materials such as wood and is only provided as an indicator.
Fire using wood logs | How hot can they get?
Importantly the auto ignition point of wood is between 300-482℃
This is sometimes known as the flash point.
Interestingly, at this the temperature wood begins to carbonise at a rate of 0.8mm/minute.
In short, to light wood logs you will first need to generate such temperatures.
The faster this can be done the less emissions will be produced when burning wood.
Wood, when burnt on an open fire will not get as hot when burning the same wood on a stove or closed appliance.
The temperature inside a wood stove can reach, depending on what wood is being burnt, around 800℃
Typically, an open fire can generate heat up to 600℃. However, some larger bonfires can reach in excess of 1000℃ in places.
Getting your fire started | generate heat quickly
Starting a fire is an important factor which will determine how hot it will get.
Creating the perfect base for your fire is fundamental to the combustion process.
The more heat that you can generate using your firelighters and kindling the faster you will achieve higher temperatures from your fire.
Further, by generating heat quickly you will produce less emissions from your fire.
The series of images below depict how quickly Hot Box ® Firestarter will produce enough heat to cause wood logs to auto ignite.
Despite the fact that the wood was stacked away from the fire lighter did not mean our fire lighting attempt failed.
Contrarily, Hot Box ® Firestarter generated enough heat for the logs inside the stove to auto ignite.
Within 30 minutes, all of the logs had set alight and the fire was ready for further fuel to be loaded.
Getting a fire started | How to do it quickly
Starting a fire can be a challenge for some.
Further, it requires preparation in terms of gathering the relevant materials and parts.
Usually, the list below, although not exhaustive will provide the good basis for any wood fire.
- Ignition element, firelighters or similar.
- Kindling, small sections of dry timber to get started.
- Larger kindling or small logs, again the moisture content should be as low as possible, ideally, 20% or less.
Thereafter. you will need to build the fire. Consider a format that allows airflow around the kindling and smaller logs. This way ignition will occur faster than if you just pile them up.
Then, once you have gathered the parts, laid the fire, and got your match or lighter you are ready to go.
If you have properly prepared your fire with a good ignition element, dry kindling and larger kindling then you should be able to generate heat quickly in a stove or any fire.
Kindling and fire lighters | What is the alternative?
Ok, so you want a fire and you want it to get hot quickly but think the above sounds like a hassle.
You are not alone, simply sourcing all of the parts to make a good fire can be awkward, especially if you have a busty life.
Thankfully, at Hot Box, we have come up with an alternative to kindling, firelighters and all that faffing around.
Hot Box ® Firestarter contains all of the component parts to create the perfect fire in a handy little box.
Our patented product eliminates all of the above three stapes and reduces it to one easy process.
Take a look at our schematic of how to get your fire hot and fast.
Hot Box ® Firestarter | How hot is a fire?
Ok, being a bit geeky when it comes to fire has given us the opportunity to run some tests on how hot a fire gets using Hot Box ® Firestarter.
The images below show both an open and closed appliance, in that order.
Using Hot Box ® Firestarter to light an open fire saw temperatures reach 661.7℃ within around 5 minutes.
Now, we ran the same test, using the same equipment in a closed appliance or stove. A DG Vision 80 to be precise.
As you can see, the temperature in the same amount of time reached 728.8℃, a difference of 67.1℃.
Importantly however, our natural firelighter generated significant heat quickly to reduce emissions.
Further in just a few minutes we were ready to add larger logs to our fire in both cases.
Conclusions
So, if you are looking to create a hot fire then give Hot Box ® Firestarter a try or gather your component parts and get prepared to build one.
Remember, efficiency is a key component of any wood burning process.
#flammablesimplicity³
Hot Box ® Firestarter | From Yorkshire with ♥️
