A fire needs both oxygen and a source of fuel to survive. To be able to get a fire going as quickly as possible in a fireplace, the fire needs to be able to spread to all of the initial bits of wood while also receiving enough fresh air to continue burning.
Wood therefore needs to be stacked in a way that’s allows for the fire to spread quickly to other pieces of wood, while ensuring that the fire can receive sufficient oxygen to keep the process going.
There are two main methods of building a fire in a fireplace, both of which have their own ways in which the wood needs to be stacked.
The two main methods of starting a fire in fireplace are:
- The traditional method of building a fire.
- The top-down fire method (also known as the upside down fire method)
These two ways of building fireplace fires use the same materials (fire starter, kindling and logs) but order them differently within the fireplace.