I got some great advice on here I had touble getting started to,I also had about 40 gal to strt and had to pull fire out wthout getting anything,boiled about 100gal this weekend and went much better had my emergency buket and shutdown with that got about inch and half of liquid in evap now,I have good dry wood split pretty small,and fired quite often,we have a 18x48 D@G so were close to same size Good Luck