Many people rely on a wood stove as their primary heat source in winter. Others use a wood stove to supplement the heat from traditional sources like a furnace or baseboard heaters. Either way, installing a wood stove can not only save you money, but for anyone living off the grid it will be a necessary source of heat.
The only challenge for some people is access to firewood. If you have to buy your own that’s always an option, but it begs the question of whether or not you should consider alternatives like propane or pellet stoves. If you have to buy the fuel, it’s worth thinking about what’s easily available and for what price.
Then again, people who live on wooded property or in close proximity to a source of wood should definitely consider a wood stove for heating.
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Beyond Heat from a Wood Stove
Many wood stoves can be used for cooking in addition to providing heat. A lot depends on how much you are dependent on the stove for your cooking. In most cases a pot or kettle can simply be placed on the top of the stove and the heat will allow you to cook almost anything.
There are also dedicated cook stoves that are wood-fired and not surprisingly they’re usually located in the kitchen. The benefit is that they will also supply heat while cooking and can even be fired up just to get a cold part of the house warm.
In some instances, people install more than one wood stove. They might have a wood-fired cookstove in the kitchen, a pot-bellied stove in the living room and smaller wood stoves for upstairs areas.
Anyone new to wood stoves can and will eventually find out which areas just don’t seem to getting the heat and adding another stove is always an option.
Types of Wood Stoves
The wood stove you install should be determined based on the square footage you plan to heat and your budget. Most stoves clearly state how much square footage they will heat, and like anything else – prices vary.
Here are some of the common types starting with the most expensive and working down to the least expensive.
Soapstone Stoves
Soapstone is a mineral that is highly tolerant of heat and temperature fluctuations. It also is an excellent material for absorbing and radiating heat. The soapstone is usually installed around the sides and top of the stove in 1-inch-thick sheets. They’re often located in living rooms and family rooms because of their style and appearance.
The primary advantage of a soapstone stove is that the soapstone continues to radiate heat through the night after the fire has been reduced to embers. Even after the fire is out, a soapstone stove will continue to radiate heat.
They are one of the most elegant stove types but also the most expensive. The soapstone is also somewhat fragile and relatively soft for a mineral. In fact, you can scratch it with a knife so any contact with hard objects on the top or sides of the stove might not be a good idea.
As a result, some designs aren’t the best for cooking on the top of the stove because the continued use of pots and pans on the surface will eventually lead to a pattern of scratches.
Potbellied Stoves
The potbellied stove design goes way back and is quite common. They also tend to be a bit expensive depending on the size and design. One thing to consider is buying an old pot-bellied stove at a flea market or other source and restoring it. Here’s a link to how to do restore a pot-bellied stove.
A pot-bellied stove is another wood stove with a classic design and is another favorite in open areas like living room and family rooms. Most are too big for bedrooms, but they also show up in smaller sizes.
Fireplace Inserts
It’s comforting to watch a fire burning in a fireplace but it’s a lousy heat source. Most of the heat goes up the chimney. However, there are fireplace inserts that not only radiate heat into the home, but some have both powered and hand cranked blowers that direct hot air into a space.
It’s a fundamental heat-exchange concept blowing the air from the hot surfaces of the insert into the home.
A fireplace insert is one of the easiest installations because you already have a chimney to exhaust the smoke. What’s important is to make sure any seams around the insert are sealed with a fireproof gasket to keep the smoke going up and out rather than into your home.
However, fireplace inserts can also get expensive. Fortunately the ease of installation may reduce some of those other costs associated with a wood stove installation.
Cast Iron Stoves with a Window
Cast iron is the most common material for wood stoves. The iron captures and transfers the heat to the surrounding area and the top gets hot enough to boil water.
Many cast iron stoves have a window which is actually a very good idea. The glass is fireproof but needs to be cleaned from time to time, but the window lets you assess how the fire is doing; when to add more wood, provides light and is actually quite relaxing to watch.
Designs for cast iron stoves with a window varies and so do the prices. It all gets back to your budget and the prominence of the wood stove in your home.
Solid Cast Iron Wood Stoves
You don’t get a window, but you’ll get the best price if you buy and install a wood stove that is solid cast iron. They’re also very good for cooking and some even have inserts on top that will fit a pot, pan or kettle.
All wood stoves require maintenance, but solid cast iron stoves that are inexpensive sometime require the most maintenance to manage rust, creosote and the general build up of ash and debris. That occurs with most any wood stove but when you buy cheap you will inevitably have oxidation or rust that needs to be repainted or touched up with a fireproof paint.
Homemade and Improvised Wood Stoves
Whether or not you decide to construct or improvise your own wood stove has a lot to do with the area you are heating and your budget. We’ll list to links below to ways to do this, but if you’re trying to heat a barn, shed or simply don’t have the money to buy a wood stove – you can build your own.
Many are made from salvaged 55-gallon drums. That could work in a barn or large, detached garage but just make sure you don’t have any gaps or leaks allowing smoke to escape and recognize that the thin metal often used for these improvised stoves won’t last forever.
Stove Pipes and Chimneys
It goes without saying that a wood stove needs to have a clean and easy way to vent the smoke from any fire. The good news is that smoke and heat rises. The best chimney and stovepipe designs are perfectly vertical going straight up through the roof.
Another critical consideration are double insulated stove pipes. This literally a pipe within a pipe. The double insulated pipe is particularly important for any length of stove pipe passing through a ceiling, wall or roof.
You don’t want direct contact with any wood or combustible materials with a hot stove pipe, and a double insulated pipe does not conduct the heat to other materials as much as a single wall stove pipe.
What’s critical is that vertical design.
Smoke doesn’t handle 90 degree turns real well. If you have to angle your stove pipe for venting, try to at least keep it at 45 degrees. If the fire is hot enough it will rise through any type of bend or shape, but a smoldering fire in the middle of the night might fill your house with smoke or at least the lingering smell of wood smoke.
All chimneys and stove pipes should also have a cap above the rising smoke that not only allows the smoke to escape but prevents rain and snow from entering the chimney or stove pipe.
Another benefit of the stovepipe cap is that it prevents animals (particularly birds) from using the convenient opening for a nest in summer. Chimney fires are a bad idea and the kindling from a bird’s nest can only make it worse.
Wood Stove Vents and Dampers
Every woodstove has vents usually at the bottom or base of the stove, and every stove pipe should have a damper. You could also attach a heat vent that will capture heat from the stove pipe and radiate it out into the room.
The vents are usually slots that you slide at the bottom to open or close off the amount of air entering the wood stove. This is one of the ways you manage the heat and the intensity of the fire.
Think of it as your wood stove thermostat. If it gets too hot, close the vent a bit and see how you do. If the fire seems to be smoldering, open the vents and let the air in to fuel the fire.
The draft up the chimney will draw more air to the fire and get things going again.
A damper is another way to manage a wood stove fire. It’s usually a flap connected to a turning coil or wire that you can use to cut off the vertical airflow or turn it up to a full open position.
What you need to do is balance the way you use venting and dampers to manage your airflow. Don’t assume that you want everything “full-open” all the time. That’s especially important at night when you want a good pile of hardwoods to keep thing warm until morning.
About Wood Stove Gaskets, Pipe Tape and Sealing Compounds
You have to open a door to put more wood into a wood stove and most wood stove doors have a gasket that tightly seals the door. It’s a fireproof material (not asbestos) and it should be checked before installing a stove for the first time, and periodically over time.
Replacement gasket material is easy to find online and it’s a giant step to keep the smoke out of the house and up the stove pipe or chimney.
There’s also metallic pipe tape. As you join pipes together to construct your stovepipe, think about sealing the seams in the joints with a heat-tolerant, metallic pipe tape.
You can also seal joints in a pipe with a heat-resistant joint compound made for sealing stovepipes. How far you go with gaskets, compound and tape depends a lot on the design of your overall wood stove system, but it you have any angles or problems with smoke getting in the house -think about your gaskets, pipe tape and sealing compounds.
Construct a Wood Stove Foundation
Wood stoves generate a lot of heat, and if it’s winter that heat will be constant and consistent over time. Regardless of its construction, the bottom of the stove is going to get hot. You can’t just place a wood stove on a wood floor, linoleum or any other flammable material.
The best way to protect the floor under a wood stove is with a brick or at least a tile base. Fire brick is ideal, but even clay tiles work. You just don’t want that heat constantly baking something that can melt, burn or discolor.
The size of the foundation under the wood stove should be at least twice as large as the base of the stove. That should give you sufficient protection and insulation from the heat. But it gets a little more complicated.
The Wall Problem with Wood Stoves
Many people don’t want a wood stove dominating the center of a room. They want it off to the side with a nice little pile of split firewood where it can do its job. The problem is that tends to put a wood stove close to a wall in a room.
If your wood stove is close to a wall you need to think about another insulating layer to resist the heat. Here again, clay tiles or ceramic tiles are a great solution.
And don’t assume that plaster or wallboard will resist the heat. It won’t. If your wood stove is within one foot of a wall, you really need to think twice about protecting that wall. A fireman would probably tell you two feet is the minimum.
If you have a brick wall in your home that would be an ideal location for any stove.
General Cleaning and Inspection
It’s wonderful to fire up a wood stove for the first time. And a second time. And then a third time. And then – you stop. The wood stove doesn’t seem to be working as well as you wanted and there’s a thick layer or ash in the bottom. Be careful.
Cleaning the ash out of wood stove you are totally dependent on for heat in winter is a daunting proposition. Put that hoodie on and let the stove and lingering coals go completely cold. And don’t assume for a minute that there are no hot coals.
You need a metal ash bucket and metal ash scoop to clear out the ash. Burning coals will most likely be lingering in that ash pile. Take them outside and bury them in an ash pit you have dug or toss them on your composing garden. The ash will soften the soil and it’s out of the house.
Brush, sweep or vacuum if you can. Just try to clean up. Then you can refill with firewood and get things started again. And get used to it. A wood stove is high maintenance. The wood and the heat might be free, but like so much else – you have to earn it.
As time goes on, you should inspect those gaskets and just assess the general performance of your wood stove.
It Kind of Makes Sense
If you have access to firewood and are scratching your head about the rising costs of utility bills, it might make sense to think about a wood stove. Even if it’s just to take the edge off of those utility bills, a wood stove can be a great backup during a winter power outage or a needed solution for living off the grid.
For most of us, it’s just nice to know we can stay warm in winter regardless of the circumstances and who doesn’t love the calming flicker of flames in the best and worst of times.
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