How to Burn Wood in a Wood Stove Overnight

Keep a wood fire burning in the hours leading up to the nighttime, but don't add any large logs two hours before you plan to go to bed. Having an existing fire with which to work is easier than trying to build a new fire from scratch before bed.

Rearrange the fire's glowing embers with a fire poker so that they cover the entire bottom of the wood stove. The embers should be roughly the size of golf balls. If you still have large chunks of semi-burned wood, open the flues and allow the wood to turn down into embers before proceeding.

Place a piece of firewood as large as your wood stove will allow directly onto the embers, then adjust the stove's flues so that they're roughly 10 percent open. If you have the flues open much more, the wood will burn too quickly and the fire will be out by morning.

Check the wood stove the following morning to see how much of the log is left. If it's gone, repeat the process the following night, but close the flues slightly. If it's still intact, or has even burned out, try again with the flues open slightly wider.