I was in charge of the fire last weekend, so I had the chance to try a top-down fire. Lloyd laughed as I assembled it, but I told him, “The last article I read about this said that it’s best to prepare it in front of a group of skeptics. They’ll laugh, and then they’ll eat their words. Er, eat their laugh.”
The premise is you build a carefully arranged pile of logs then light the top, understanding that flames go up, but heat goes in all directions. My own analogy is: If your roof catches fire, your whole house is going to go up in flames.
The way this works is: You lay 3-4 of your largest logs parallel to each other, about half an inch apart. (I just used 2. Lloyd had bought some firewood that had about 10 logs, and I wanted to save 4 for the morning.) Next, the same number of slightly smaller logs on top, perpendicular. (Look at me using all those math terms.) Next level, same number of slightly smaller, also perpendicular. Now some sticks, then a little bundle of twiggy, burn-y stuff. I used one of my waxed cardboard squares to get the stuff on top going, and within fifteen minutes Lloyd was chewing on his giggles.
It burns wonderfully. Even though I just had two / two / two in my layers, it lasted a couple of hours and burned nearly all to ash without any messing with it. That’s its best feature: it’s a poke-free fire.
When it was all burned out, I banked my coals and was able to start the morning’s fire with those coals and a little tinder. Yep, bring on the apocalypse – I am ready.