How to Start a Wood Fire in an Outdoor Fireplace

Outdoor fireplaces are an attractive and useful amenity in the landscape. They can produce heat to make outdoor living more comfortable for seasonal use, and they add a pleasing visual ambience to any setting. Provided the fireplace is structurally graded for wood burning, instead of natural gas or propane, nearly any wood can be used as fuel. Igniting an outdoor fire is as simple as lighting an interior fireplace, except the scale of fire can often be larger, depending on the size of the firebox. A proper wood fire can usually be started successfully in a matter of minutes.

Newspaper
Kindling
Logs
Matches or lighter

Instructions

- 1
  Open the damper on your outdoor fireplace chimney, if the chimney is fitted with one.
- 2
  Crumple up individual sheets of dry newspaper into loose balls. Use as much paper as necessary to make enough balls to cover at least 3/4 of the fireplace grate surface.
- 3
  Arrange pieces of dry wood kindling loosely to cover the newspaper balls, in a horizontal position with plenty of open space around them, not tightly packed. Use kindling of any length that fits on the grate, but keep the diameter to 1 inch or less for easier ignition.
- 4
  Place one or two small logs over the kindling wood, positioning them snugly so they are seated on the grate and will not easily topple.
- 5
  Light the newspaper balls in several spots around the grate with a match or lighter.
- 6
  Allow the kindling and small logs time to catch fire and begin to glow orange-red.
- 7
  Once the fire is well established, add one or two larger logs. Introduce more logs to the fire slowly over time to keep it blazing. Position added logs so they are in a crosshatch position to the previous logs. This will keep the airflow around the fire to keep it going.

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