Stove-Maxxing: A Guide to Optimising Your Wood Burning Stove Experience

Expert from Swedish manufacturer, Contura, shares insights on how to get the most out of your wood burning stove this autumn-winter.

When operating to its full potential, a wood burning stove provides a sustainable, efficient and cost-effective heating solution for your home. In addition to these practical benefits, it also acts as a stylish and striking feature for your living space – especially when lit.

Failure to use and maintain your wood burning stove correctly, however, can prevent it from reaching peak performance. So, to ensure you’re optimising your wood burning stove experience, Phil Wood, UK Managing Director at Europe’s leading wood burning stove manufacturer, Contura, is sharing his guide to ‘stove-maxxing’ this autumn-winter.

Phil says: “Using and maintaining a wood burning stove correctly will enable owners to enjoy the very best of what it has to offer – from the warmth of the mesmerising, clean flames in the short term to its cost-effectiveness as a sustainable domestic heating solution in the long run.

“There are some simple dos and don’ts when it comes to wood burning stoves – and understanding and following these guidelines is essential to ensure that your wood burner is able to function at its most effective and efficient.”

Read on for Phil’s top ‘stove-maxxing’ tips to help you get the most of your wood burning stove in 2026 and beyond…

• Don’t be a fool when choosing fuel

Using the correct fuel is essential when it comes to optimising your wood burning experience, ensuring your stove runs with maximum efficiency, produces optimal heat and burns with the cleanest flame.

You should fuel your wood burning stove with the best dry, seasoned, or kiln-dried wood that you can afford. It is important to note that any wood must, by law, have a moisture content below 20 percent if it is to be used in your wood burner.

Check for a Woodsure ‘Ready to Burn’ certification mark when buying logs – this will ensure you are sourcing your fuel from an accredited British wood supplier and guarantees that the wood has an optimum moisture content of between 12 and 20 percent.

High-quality hardwood varieties of wood, such as oak, beech or ash, make great choices as fuel due to their high densities – which means that, when effectively dried or seasoned, they burn for longer and provide a more consistent heat output than softwoods.

In fact, using the wrong type of fuel in your wood burning stove can have a hugely detrimental impact on a number of levels. Wet, treated, polished, oiled or waste woods, for example, are all likely to burn inefficiently and will produce a fire that generates an excessive amount of unpleasant smoke, leading to the blackening of the glass door and firebricks.

• Look to your log storage

The importance of effective log storage is often overlooked but is essential to ensure optimal combustion and efficiency.

Once at home, wood must be stored under cover and in a place with consistent airflow to keep it dry. Failure to do so will lead to moisture retention, which would cause the logs burn inefficiently, reducing heat output and generating more smoke, amongst other issues.

• Light it right

Adjusting the way that you are lighting the fuel in your wood burning stove will optimise your wood burning stove experience, by helping it reach its best burn and enabling a good draught.

Whilst the ideal technique will vary between wood burners – so be sure to refer to the lighting instructions in your stove’s product manual – across Contura’s range of stoves, the ‘top-down lighting’ method tends to be the most effective when it comes to starting the fire.

This method encourages the wood to catch more gradually, giving the stove, flue and chimney time to warm up and reducing the risk of a down draught, when smoke passes into your home as opposed to heading out of the chimney.

When starting a fire in your wood burning stove, we generally recommend beginning with two-average sized logs beneath a handful of smaller pieces of kindling, topped with a natural wax-coated wood wool firelighter. As the technique’s name suggests, start by lighting the firelighter on top of your fuel stack and then allow it to burn down towards the logs.

When lighting, ensure that the air vents of your wood burner are configured to allow the maximum amount of air flow to help get the fire going. Then, when the fire has caught and looks to be stable, slowly adjust the air vents to decrease the oxygen supply to an amount which allows the wood burning stove to continue to burn clean flames at a steadier rate. Slowing the burn rate of your fuel will help it last for longer, maximising the efficiency of your wood burner.

• Ensure that your fire TV plays in HD

There is no doubt that one of the joys of a wood burning stove is the ability to sit by and watch its mesmerising flames flickering away through the glass door. As such, it is no surprise that any blackening of the glass is likely to lead to a less-than-optimal experience by providing an unsightly obstruction to this view.

Blackened glass is often indicative of an operational error, such as using the wrong fuel or providing insufficient airflow when burning, so it’s worth checking that you are using your wood burning stove correctly in the first instance.

If you frequently clean your wood burner’s glass, it should be relatively easy to remove any soot remnants by rubbing it gently with dry paper or kitchen roll. If this proves ineffective, slightly moisten the paper or use a damp cloth, dip it in the ashes left in the fire chamber and then lightly rub the ash into the blackened areas of the glass. Though it feels counterintuitive to clean dirt with dirt, this trick is very effective in cleaning the glass of a wood burning stove – so trust the process!

• Keep it clean

The glass isn’t the only part of a wood burning stove which needs to be cleaned to ensure that it is able to function optimally. Cleaning your stove regularly will do wonders to ensure it continues to perform well and look good – even after years of use.

Cleaning recommendations will vary between products, so please check your user manual for guidance. The required frequency of cleaning will also be influenced by factors such as how much a wood burning stove is used.

When cleaning the painted exterior of Contura’s wood burning stoves, we typically recommend wiping it down gently with a damp cloth. This should be sufficient; no special cleaning products are needed and, in some cases, can actually damage the stove.

For the interior, a steel brush can be used to clean the cast iron parts of the combustion chambers (the area in which the wood burns); the wire bristles are highly effective in dislodging and sweeping away remnants of soot, ash, wood and even sticky creosote that can build up as a result of inefficient wood burning practices. Remember also to clean carefully around the space that the ash box sits within when getting rid of the ash.

At least once a year, the chimney, flue and stove should be professionally swept and checked. This is a vital task when it comes to maintaining your wood burning stove. Having all parts checked to make sure that they are functioning correctly and safely – including confirming that there are no blockages or other issues – will help you to ensure that your stove is running optimally and safely.

It is important to note that not all wood burning stoves are the same, so always be sure to check the instructions in your product manual for guidance specific to your appliance. Similarly, if your wood burner is more than ten years old, we would recommend replacing it entirely with a modern, Ecodesign compliant version.

For more information, please visit www.contura.eu.

-Ends-

Notes to editors:

• Rooster PR will coordinate comment, interview and profile opportunities for Contura UK Country Manager, Phil Wood.
• The Contura PR team will also arrange visits to the nearest Contura Design Centre dealerships or the Contura showroom in Doncaster to see the product range.

For further press information, please contact:
Josie Waddington | Tilly Everard | Elsa Findlay | Julie Aguilera
Rooster.
T: +44 (0)203 440 8930
E: Contura@Rooster.co.uk
W: Rooster Contura Newsroom

About Contura:
Contura is Europe’s leading manufacturer of wood burning stoves, offering an extensive range of classic and contemporary wood burners; from traditional insert stoves suitable for existing fireplaces, to freestanding statement models made with innovative materials such as soapstone.

Starting at £1,295, Contura stoves are premium yet affordable. Award winning, timeless Swedish design means the products complement or enhance any style of home, whilst also offering outstanding performance, maximum efficiency, practicality and ease of use.

Designed and assembled at the factory located in Markaryd, Sweden, and manufactured to the highest standards, Contura stoves are highly energy efficient, offering powerful convection, superior combustion technology and clean burning systems. All Contura stoves are DEFRA Clean Air Act exempt and thus approved for use in Smoke Control Areas.

Contura stoves can be purchased through a network of 165 independent retailers nationwide.

Contura is part of the NIBE group, a Swedish manufacturing company producing world class solutions in sustainable energy across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

Contura is a founding member of the Stove Industry Association (SIA) in the UK.

Contura is a proud supporter of Eden: People+Planet’s efforts to restore and monitor over 241,150 hectares of land, creating jobs to support local communities and the environment in the long-term. Since 2018, Contura has funded the planting of over 170,000 trees.

For more information, please visit www.contura.eu