Help - New to Woodburner

[5amisnotmorning]

We have just moved into our new house which has a multi fuel stove in a fairly large room but seems to give out no heat.

We had the chimney swept and have played with closing off the draw more but it doesn't seem to help.

What are we doing wrong?

Is it burning well and brightly? What are you actually burning?

If using wood get kiln dried or well seasoned so that there is a very low level of water content in the wood.

I'm not an expert as we've only had our wood burner for a few weeks, but I do the following:

Bed of smokeless coal - about 8 pieces
1-2 firelighters on top
Few twists of newspapers
Little pile of kindling

Light the firelighters and let it get nice and hot. Then put a log on top and it needs a fair amount of attention at first - possibly more newspaper / kindling.

Once it's got going it's easier to leave alone and gets much hotter - log on every hour or so.

I agree drier logs are better - around 20% moisture content is good. We've got a moisture meter to check. Kiln dried can be too dry though and you'll burn through wood very quickly.

I always recomend that my customers watch this video before lighting for the first time although this is for certain mkes of stoves the principal is the same for 99% of woodburners.

See if you can find the instructions for it online.
Yes to seasoned wood. It'll take a while to build up heat if it hasn't been used for a while. It takes about an hour to get ours running at a constant temp. Try getting a flue thermometer to give you an idea of when you need to add wood etc.

It just takes a bit of practice before you get to know what settings you need but once you've got the hang of it you'll love it!

We burn logs, lots of air to begin with to get it going and then gradually close off so the heat is going into the room and not up the chimney. One or two logs will not give off much heat - you need to get lots in there.

There are youtube video's available.

ps - we wondered why ours didnt give off much heat at first as well.

Thanks all - we (think we) have used seasoned wood but I think we may have been too sparing to start off with.

It has been burning but not brightly yet seems to burn through wood very quickly.

A flue thermometer sounds like a very good idea as it might help us gauge it. The previous owners didn't use it and it is set in quite a large brick fireplace - would that make any difference?