Wood stoves can be inefficient if a persons does not have an understanding of how wood stoves manages heat and smoke. It is possible for a person to see there wood stove burning logs yet not providing enough heat to the room. This phenomenon is caused by the fact that smoke is unburned fuel, and that the smoke leave the wood stove and exits the chimney.
In many older wood stoves, this smoke is a waste product that the heat that is released from the unburned fuel pushes out of the chimney. Modern wood stoves uses different technology to ignite the smoke before it exits the wood stove, such as using secondary combustion tubes or catalytic converters. Catalytic wood stoves use a metal honeycomb to ignite the gases that exit the stove.
How to make your wood stove heat your home better
Because the metal honeycomb naturaly ignite at low temperatures, catalytic wood stoves allow people to burn there wood slow while still emitting heat from the burning wood. When purchasing a catalytic wood stove, people should not only look at the BTU outputs that the wood stove will produce, but also at the efficiency of the stove. High efficiency allow the stove to maximize the carbon in the wood that is burning in the stove, ensuring that the heat remain within the home.
The quality of the wood that people use in the wood stove is a critical factor in the efficiency of the stove. In some cases, if green wood are used in the stove, the stove will not perform correct. Green wood contains a high amount of water, and the stove must use some of its energy to evaporate the water from the green wood before it can ignite the wood.
Because it is using some of its energy to evaporate the water from the wood, the fire will stay cool within the wood stove. Cool fires dont burn very well, leading to the creation of creosote within the chimney. Creosote buildup in a chimney is a safety hazard to the home.
Therefore, seasoned wood that has been dried for at least one year should of be use in the wood stove to ensure that it burns clean and efficiently. Another factor that a person should consider is the movement of heat within the room that the wood stove is heating. Even large wood stoves produces a lot of heat, but that heat may remain within a small portion of the room.
One way to help move the heat from the stove to the remainder of the room is to use thermoelectric fan. Thermoelectric fans use the heat from the wood stove to move warm air along the floor into the remainder of the room. Thermoelectric fans dont require electrical plugs to be used, but they do require the use of heat from the wood stove.
By using thermoelectric fans, people can more effectively distribute the heat from their wood stove throughout the entire room. Finally, the type of wood that is burned will impact the type of heat that is provided to the room. Hardwoods, like hickory, produce more heat for longer periods of time, making them ideal for use during the sleeping hours of the people in the home.
Softwoods, like pine, burn quickly, and thus may be used to start a fire in the wood stove, but are not very effective at burning for long periods of time. By using high-BTU hardwoods within a high-efficiency wood stove, a person can reduce the amount of wood that they requires during the year. By utilizing high-quality wood, maintaining a properly draft chimney, and using an efficient stove, a person can achieve maximum warmth within their home.
