Firelighters compared: wood wool or paraffin blocks?

Fire starters or firelighter blocks? For an open fireplace or wood stove, the fire starters win. They're made of wood wool and wax, burn for eight to ten minutes and give off no chemical smell in your living room. Paraffin-based firelighter blocks are cheaper per piece and burn for less time, and you really do smell them at an open fireplace.

That's why we only sell the fire starters, alongside the rest of the fireplace accessories. The Fire Starters 2 kg (200 pieces) are a 2 kg box with about 200 fire starters, enough for a whole heating season.

On the barbecue it's more nuanced. There smell matters less, but burn time counts for more because charcoal takes longer to catch.

A firelighter block is usually pressed sawdust soaked in paraffin or kerosene. It catches very quickly, burns fiercely, and is gone after four minutes or so. Fine under a barbecue where you're standing next to it, trickier in a fireplace where the fire has to build itself up.

A fire starter is wood wool, twisted into a plug and dipped in wax. That wax melts slowly and feeds the flame steadily, instead of burning up in one go. That's the whole difference: time.

Why that matters: wood 15 centimetres thick needs eight to ten minutes of sustained flame before it burns through on its own. If your fire starter can't manage that, the fire goes out while you think it's going.

The smell is the second point. You smell kerosene, and in a living room with an open fireplace it hangs there for the first ten minutes. Wax and wood wool smell of nothing.

Three things, and not much more. A fire starter that burns long enough, something to light it with without burning your fingers, and dry wood.

The fire starters are the first. Two or three per fire is enough, and the box lasts a season. Spread them out instead of piling them up, then the wood catches on several sides at once.

For the lighting itself, a long jet flame is the most pleasant. The Champ Tatin has a curved neck that gets you under the wood without putting your hand into the fireplace. More models are in the fireplace lighters, and which is good for what you can read in our top 5 fireplace lighters.

Dry wood is the third, and that's more a matter of storage than of buying. Wood that waits for a week next to the fireplace in a Felt Log Basket (60 litres) dries out further, and that makes a noticeable difference when lighting.

If you want to get it right in one go: the Fireplace Basic Set has the fire starters, a lighter and gloves together.

Open fireplace in the living room. Fire starters. The smell of paraffin lingers in a room where you sit, and you need the longer burn time for thicker logs.

Wood stove. Fire starters too, for the same reason. A stove also only draws properly once the fire is up to temperature, and that takes time.

Charcoal barbecue. Both work. Fire starters are pleasant here because briquettes catch slowly; there's a reason they're also listed under BBQ accessories.

Fire pit or table fireplace. Fire starters, because outdoors you have wind to reckon with and then a longer flame is simply more reliable.

The most common mistake is using too little fire starter. One fire starter under a stack of five kilos of wood won't manage, however long it burns. Two or three, spread across the width, will.

The second is wet wood. No fire starter makes up for wood above twenty percent moisture; it just hisses and fogs up your glass.

And the third: adding wood with bare hands. The Heat-Resistant Leather Gloves are no luxury once the fire is going.

Do the sums, because the price per box says little. A box of fire starters contains about two hundred and you use two to three each time. That comes to well over sixty fires from one box.

A bag of firelighter blocks is cheaper per piece, but you often need four instead of two, and you have to add wood more often if the fire doesn't catch straight away. At the bottom line they're barely apart.

What does make the difference is whether the fire catches first time. A failed attempt costs you two blocks, ten minutes and a room that smells of paraffin.

Firelighter blocks aren't bad, they're just made for something else. Under a barbecue in the garden they do a fine job for little money.

Indoors the fire starter wins on two points you notice immediately: it burns twice as long, and your living room doesn't smell of it. That's the whole trade-off.