If it's any consolation, I didn't get any real heat near the floor until about the 5th or 6th fire, when I stopped being cautious and gave it more of a blast. Up to that point, I had been getting pretty worried that I had got something horribly wrong
! Since the bigger fires though, and possibly because the oven got progressively drier too, there's been no problem getting it warmed up
.
I still just have a dinky little BBQ thermometer with a maximum reading of 600F and it's obvious that my oven now easily gets beyond that - by how much, I don't know but all that really matters is that it cooks just fine - yours will too!
Sarah