Wood Heating/Glass Cleaning Tips

Ensure your wood is dry and well seasoned. Green or wet wood burns poorly and emits smoke.
Light a fire using sufficient kindling to establish a hot fire quickly. Fully open air vents.
Use smaller logs to get the fire well established.
Run combustion heater on a high burn rate for the first 20—25 minutes.
Do not turn your fire down until it’s well established with red coals.
Allow air to circulate between the logs by not overfilling the heater.
Use larger logs for slower burning once the fire is established.
Don’t block the incoming air supply with logs.
Rekindle the fire quickly with some newspaper and small wood if the fuel load has burnt down to only a few coals.
Store wood in a well ventilated, covered location.
If possible store firewood off the ground, on pallets, layer of bricks, stone or plastic to prevent moisture being drawn up into the wood. This also reduces the number of insects getting into the woodpile and minimizing the risk of being bitten.
Do not store your firewood against the house as it may allow a bridge for termites. Also, in areas where bushfires are a risk, storing wood against a house is a dangerous practice.
Seasoned firewood wetted by rain will dry again in a few days.
If buying firewood, order your wood early, to beat the rush, reduce delivery lead times, allow the wood to cure and it may be cheaper.

Wood heater glass cleaning tip:

When the glass on the fire box is cool, take well wetted paper towel, gently dab the paper towel into the fine ashes you are cleaning out of the fireplace and cover the surface of the wet paper towel with the ashes. Start wiping the glass up and down and side to side on the glass. The ash removes unspent creosote and hard to remove resin easily from the glass without a scratch.