I‘m not sure why yours needs four hours (unless you light it several times a day?). Ours takes an hour to burn down, maybe. And once it burns, it burns - we simply have to adjust the door setting once when it got going (although we could probably do without this step), and then close the door completely when it‘s burned down. Maybe yours is slightly different in build?
For getting it going on cold days if it hasn‘t been „on“ before, have you tried a „teaser fire“? If you have access to your chimney somewhere (e.g. through a cleaning opening in the basement), you can light a bundle of old newspaper or similar stuff straight in the chimney to heat up the air there. If the chimney is really cold, you might have to do that several times to get it up to a sufficient temperature. Then light the main fire right away, and the chimney will pull a lot better.
If you don‘t have cleaning access to the chimney, try the teaser fire in the main fire-room and see if that helps.
We usually do this in autumn before the first fire, and also if there hasn’t been a fire for a few days in winter. Not sure if this will be sufficient in very cold areas, but it certainly works for us.
Re: Savings
I‘m not sure why yours needs four hours (unless you light it several times a day?). Ours takes an hour to burn down, maybe. And once it burns, it burns - we simply have to adjust the door setting once when it got going (although we could probably do without this step), and then close the door completely when it‘s burned down. Maybe yours is slightly different in build?
For getting it going on cold days if it hasn‘t been „on“ before, have you tried a „teaser fire“? If you have access to your chimney somewhere (e.g. through a cleaning opening in the basement), you can light a bundle of old newspaper or similar stuff straight in the chimney to heat up the air there. If the chimney is really cold, you might have to do that several times to get it up to a sufficient temperature. Then light the main fire right away, and the chimney will pull a lot better.
If you don‘t have cleaning access to the chimney, try the teaser fire in the main fire-room and see if that helps.
We usually do this in autumn before the first fire, and also if there hasn’t been a fire for a few days in winter. Not sure if this will be sufficient in very cold areas, but it certainly works for us.
Milkyway