Wood stoves are much better at heating a room than open fireplaces.
Fireplaces add atmosphere, and wood stoves add heat and atmosphere.
The average home fireplace only turns 10 to 20% of the wood it burns into heat, while a wood-burning stove usually turns 50 to 77% of the wood it burns into heat.
Depending on how big it is and where you put it, a wood stove can heat just one room or the whole house.
It also has the added benefit that it can heat your home even if the power goes out.
Different kinds of wood stoves
There are three main types of woodstoves: circulating stoves, radiant heaters (also called "potbellied" stoves), and combustion stoves (also called "Franklin type" stoves). Generally, circulating stoves are the most efficient.
Circulating wood stoves have two walls and a combustion chamber inside. They are usually made of cast iron.
Air flows over the inner shell because the outer shell is made of sheet metal. This warm air heats the room, while the outer shell stays relatively cool.
The airflow around the inner chamber lets enough heat escape so that efficiencies of 70 to 80 percent can be reached.
With a circulating stove, a damper lets you control the draft and the amount of heat that comes out. Some models also have a fan that lets even more convective air flow through the stove.
If you have an open fireplace and want to make it more efficient, you can put in a woodstove insert. This will help get rid of drafts and keep more heat in your home instead of going up the chimney.
Advantages of a Wood-burning Stove
Wood stoves use less energy and cost less money than other ways to heat your home.
The source of renewable heat puts out very little carbon, which is good for the environment.
Wood stoves also keep working even when the power goes out, giving off light and heat even when there is no electricity.
In addition to being useful, wood burning stoves can also make your space look and feel better.
Because there are so many stylish options, these appliances are often the center of attention in many living rooms.
They are the perfect place to meet in the middle on cold winter evenings.
Wood stoves are also pretty easy to use and don't need much upkeep.
Open Fireplaces Made of Stone
When you think of a wood fireplace, you probably picture an open fireplace made of stone.
Most of the time, these fireplaces are open and made of brick, stone, or masonry.
If your home was built before the 1980s, you probably have a masonry fireplace that is open to the room.
Open fireplaces are a very inefficient way to heat your home. They produce a lot of smoke and particulate matter, and they can let in bad smells or gases.
Inserts for wood stoves
Are fireboxes that are put inside an existing masonry fireplace and sealed.
They use the existing brickwork as a frame and the chimney as a vent, which keeps installation costs low and makes full use of what's already there.
With wood fireplace inserts, old fireplaces that aren't very good at heating can be turned into very good heating systems.
Most of the time, a blower is used with a wood insert to push the warm air further into the house.
Wood inserts are great for quick and easy upgrades that can change the look of a room and how well it heats with very little work.
Stoves for burning wood
Are a type of wood fireplace that stands alone and can be the only way to heat a home, even in the coldest climates.
Wood-burning stoves can give off a lot of heat and warm up very big rooms.
Most of the time, wood stoves are set up according to the manufacturer's instructions and must be set up on a concrete slab or hearth pad.
Wood stoves have double-walled pipes that go up and out of the house to vent the smoke.
Wood stoves are great for big rooms, cabins, or houses, as well as places that don't have gas and may lose power often in the winter.
Wood stoves have been around for a long time and are a great way to heat your whole house.
Fireplaces that burn wood
Are fireplaces that are built into a wall (with the appropriate non-combustible material surroundings).
They are different from open masonry fireplaces in that they don't need a chimney. Instead, they use venting like wood stoves and fireplace inserts.
Wood fireplaces are great for new homes that want to add a fireplace but don't want to build a chimney or masonry fireplace first.
Wood-burning fireplaces of today are just as efficient and give off the same amount of heat as wood stoves, but they are mostly used in new buildings or large-scale renovations.
How do stoves that use wood work?
Stoves for burning wood are made from cast iron, stone, or steel.
Like their name says, they burn wood.
Wood stoves are made up of the following parts:
- Stove
- Chimney
- Damper
- Baffle
When you start a fire in a wood stove, the heat from the fire warms both the stove and the air in the room.
The stove's chimney pulls the smoke from the fire out of the house.
With the damper, you can control how much air goes into the stove.
This control changes how big the fire is and how much heat it gives off.
A baffle (or more than one baffle, depending on the size and shape of the stove) makes the fire gases burn longer.
This is an important feature because gases that have only been partially burned are dangerous air pollutants.
FAQs about Wood-Burning Stoves
#1: Can stoves that burn wood really help save energy?
The short answer: Yes, of course!
It shouldn't come as a surprise that heating with wood is a lot cheaper than using electricity, oil, or natural gas.
But what would the real savings in energy and money look like?
If you use a wood stove to heat your home in zones, you can cut your energy costs by 20 to 40%.
To put that in perspective, a person whose monthly heating bill is $100 will save $20 to $40 a month just by switching to wood-burning heating.
Think about how much money you could save over time.
#2: How well do wood-burning stoves work?
Think again if you think that all wood-burning stoves today are the same as the ones your grandparents used decades ago.
New wood stoves that have been approved by the EPA have very low emissions and use a lot of energy efficiently (almost twice as much as a traditional fireplace).
Models that are EPA-certified are at least 60% efficient, and some of them are up to 80% efficient. This is a big improvement over the low-tech, non-certified models of the past, which usually had efficiency rates of 50% or less.
Choose an EPA-certified stove to know for sure that it is good for the environment and saves energy.
#3, but doesn't burning wood cause CO2 to be released into the air?
Not every wood stove is made the same way.
There is no way to compare wood-burning stoves made decades ago to stoves made more recently that meet EPA performance standards.
Older wood stoves need a constant supply of new logs to heat a room and create up to 70% more pollution in the air. This is why they have a bad reputation for making homes smokey on the inside as well as the outside.
Because of the EPA's new emission standards, we no longer have to deal with inefficient and smokey wood-burning stoves.
Since the late 1980s, both catalytic and non-catalytic wood-burning stoves have had to meet the EPA's mandatory smoke emission limits of 4.1 and 7.5 grams of smoke per hour, respectively. (We'll talk about the difference between catalytic and non-catalytic stoves later.)
The emissions standards put a much-needed limit on how much harmful CO2 and small particles wood-burning stoves can release into the air. This puts pressure on stove makers to make more advanced wood-burning technologies to meet the standards.
#4: Is wood a fuel that won't run out?
Wood has another advantage over fossil fuels: it can be used over and over again.
Fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are definitely in short supply.
In other words, we'll never come back.
And if we keep using fossil fuels at the rate we are, we may run out of them much sooner than we thought (some sources say we will run out of oil by 2052!).
Wood is a renewable resource, which means that as long as sustainable forestry practices are in place, there will always be wood to use.
And it's a good thing that sustainable forestry in the U.S. is at an all-time high.
There are more trees growing on U.S. soil now than there were a hundred years ago. This is mostly because the U.S. Forest Service makes wood harvesters plant more trees than they cut down.
Even if you plan to buy logs to burn in your stove, you can be sure that your way of heating your home hasn't caused global warming or dangerous tree cutting.
#5: How do you measure how much a stove can heat?
The amount of heat a wood-burning stove can put out is measured in Btu, which stands for British thermal units.
Most of the time, a higher Btu rating means that the stove can heat a bigger area.
For example, a stove with a rating of 42,000 Btu can heat a 1,300 sq. ft. home, but a 60,000 Btu stove would be better for a 2,000 sq. ft. home.
Talk to the maker of your wood stove and the person who will install it about your home's heating needs to make sure you get the right stove for your space.
