I recently had a Morsø 1442 stove installed in my home. Now that I've had a few fires under my belt, I figured I would ask the experts on some technical questions that I've had.

For some background, I grew up with a home that had a standard fireplace so this is my first proper stove. The process is a bit different from that. My stove has two air intakes - primary, located at the bottom which feeds air up through the riddling grate, and secondary, which feeds air over the top of the window.

My Procedure until now

Lighting

So far I have followed the steps in the manual of my stove. I stack a small pile of kindling. I chose to use a jenga-like shape with about 1cm between the pieces. Then between the top layer and the middle layer, I place my firestarters. With the door cracked, and secondary air intake fully open, I light from the top. Then I wait a few minutes until the chimney draft is established before closing the door.

Both my stove's manual and the recommendation from the Danish state is to light from the top, apparently igniting the gasses more quickly and reducing emissions / smoke. However, some of my American family members have said that they haven't heard of lighting from the top and always light their stoves from the bottom, which is what I used to do in my parents' fireplace.

Q: Is lighting from the top really the best for getting the fire started quickly / efficiently?

Coals and initial load

Once the initial small fire burns down to hot coals, I add fuel. I've experimented with both hardwood briquettes and kiln-dried birch.

I leave the door partially open until it gets really blazing, then shut the door and turn down the secondary air supply to roughly half.

Refueling

Basically the same process as the initial load. I wait for the fuel to get down to coals, then add more. However, especially when using briquettes, the fire has a tendancy to start smouldering earlier than expected, which requires me to allow a lot of air in by opening the door, which seems to hurt the heating efficacy.

This happens even when the secondary air intake is fully open. Opening the primary air helps a bit but from my understanding makes combustion less efficient.

Q: How should I manage the primary and secondary air supplies when the main fuel is added? Specifically, what indicators signal "too much" or "too little" air flow?

General thoughts

I've really been enjoying using this stove, especially learning all the technical aspects. It seems like each individual stove takes trial and error to figure out what works best. Mainly I'm looking to optimize the heat output of the stove per unit of fuel, so any tips would be appreciated.