How to build a fire in an arch

[TrentonTerry]

This may be a basic question, but I have put a picture of my arch to this post. My question is, some people seem to put extra bricks and rocks near the back of the last pan. This would not allow me to build a fire under my last pan (and as a result only need to tend the 'front' fire).

Sadly I will not have a chimney this year, so I just have a brick turned on its side to let smoke out the back and a crack so i can feed some smaller wood onto the 'back' fire.

When I build a fire, i essentially have a four foot long fire that consumes a LOT of wood. Its a pain to keep a fire burning on both ends and occasionally stuffing some burning wood into the middle of the two fires to keep the middle pan burning.

Would this be more efficient to fill up under the last pan and just allow 2-3 inches below the pan for the air to escape. Would this let me use less wood and be more efficient and still get a boil on the last pan? I have 2 preheat pans I put on top of the blocks (in this picture there are 2 peices of wood drying out instead of the two pans), so the third pan is still a boiling pan for me.

Thanks for the advice for this and the other questions I have posed on this my inaugural year!

[buck3m]

Would this be more efficient to fill up under the last pan and just allow 2-3 inches below the pan for the air to escape. Would this let me use less wood and be more efficient and still get a boil on the last pan? I have 2 preheat pans I put on top of the blocks (in this picture there are 2 peices of wood drying out instead of the two pans), so the third pan is still a boiling pan for me.


I would get some type of pipe/stack to use. At one time we used a length of silo pipe for a stack which we scrounged for free.

Your fire should be up on some type of grate to get air under the fire. Again, you can make do with anything that will act as a grate.

I would definitely try building a ramp and just firing hard under the first pan and letting a newly added stack draw the heat and fire to the other end.

[happy thoughts]

terry- it will be a block arch for us next year. Meanwhile I've been collecting ideas and pictures from this forum so hubby has something to work with. Re a chimney- have you seen these arch pics posted by another member (Groves)? The chimney design looks clever and is built with more block. You'll likely get a better draw out of a taller chimney but this looks a lot better than none at all.

Groves website pics are here if you want to take a look: http://matthewgroves.com/Hobbies/Sugaring09.html

The original post I found this in is here: http://mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?t=10096&page=4

Good luck!

[Big_Eddy]

Terry - you want a stack. 7" standard stove pipe is about $8 for a 3' section (on sale at TSC last week, probably this week too.)

Get about 10' of stack. Then build the fire in the front 18" only and let the fire travel front to back. You will easily double the evaporation rate for the same amount of wood. With small dry wood, a 6+' long arch still has flames entering the stack, so you might as well extract some of the heat from those flames before they are gone.

There is no need to "push the fire back" under the middle pans. Just fire at the front and let the flames rush past the other 2 pans as they race for the stack.