Wood Burners

The Number One Reason Most People Install A Wood Burning Stove

The first question to ask anyone considering installing a woodburner is why? Why do you want to do such a thing? Because the answer to that (and typically there is no single or correct answer) will really help clarify the important features to look for when researching and buying a woodburner.

For many people the attraction of a wood burning stove is simply that it looks and feels good. There is no substitute for a real fire, even if it is safely enclosed behind glass or metal doors. Burning well seasoned wood smells different and feels different and no hot water radiator can ever hope to compete on those terms or even as a feature in a room, come to that. This is basic, primal stuff that’s rooted deep - fire means warmth and comfort and has done since we lived in caves.

Some people install a wood burning stove that they subsequently rarely use - they just like the whole look and use it to provide an eye-catching focal point in a kitchen or living room. This is not unusual when people buy a house that has an existing, but unused, chimney breast and fireplace - they feel the need to put something in its place. Quite often there’s also an Aga or Rayburn in the kitchen doing a similar job - looking decorative while the day to day heating and cooking functions are in reality conducted using a conventional boiler, oven and hob.

Install A Wood Burning Stove To Go Green AND Save Money

On a more logical plane, there are good financial reasons to install a wood burner. When used as the primary heat source a wood burning stove can save significant sums of money since wood biofuel is much cheaper than oil, gas or electricity powered heating systems.

Even people who install a woodburner as a complementary heating or cooking capability that coexists with an existing central heating system can realise serious savings. That’s because it’s common to want to heat the rooms most in use, such as the lounge and kitchen, and a wood burning stove does just that without needlessly heating empty bedrooms. When the whole house needs heat then the regular central heating system can take over, but it’s not wasting heat when it doesn’t need to.

Wood burning stoves are also surprisingly efficient. An open fireplace is typically rather less than 25% efficient, meaning that three quarters of the available energy is wasted (as smoke, particles and simply up the chimney); however, a modern woodburning stove reverses this ratio and is likely to be more than 75% efficient, which is close to what gas and oil boilers can achieve. This greater efficiency is largely due to better combustion of the fuel and as a result, far less smoke and soot is created.

Go Green And Help Save The Planet With A Wood Burning Stove

People concerned about the environment and the world we might be leaving for our children (which is increasingly ever more of us) can take comfort from the fact that burning wood is among the most ecologically sound sources of energy available. As a “Green Technology” a wood heating system perfectly blends both tradition and cutting edge environmental thinking.

In many cases, the wood used to fuel a woodburner is recycled waste material anyway (wood chips and wood pellets, which are manufactured from compressed sawdust). But even when not recycled, trees are still an abundant resource on the planet and are endlessly renewable - plant a new tree for each one cut down and the sun and CO2 will do the rest.

In fact, trees are arguably the ultimate in solar power since they not only store the sun’s energy in a convenient and easy to use form that can be stored until needed, but they also absorb and lock away carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This process is not totally “carbon neutral” but it comes close and the maths produce a compelling argument in favour of using wood biofuel. When a tree dies or is cut down the carbon it has locked up is release back to the atmosphere - regardless of whether the wood is burned or left to rot naturally. But a live tree not only contains a significant amount of carbon (it’s basically what trees are made of), it is continually absorbing CO2, storing the carbon and releasing pure oxygen back into the air.

And the point is that in order to exploit wood as a biofuel, it is necessary at any given time to stock far more live trees than are cut down for use in wood burners. The math is simple: if your annual requirement for wood amounts to (for the sake of argument) the equivalent of a single tree and it takes, say, fifteen years to grow that tree to harvestable size, then you personally would need to permanently maintain a stock of no less than fifteen trees and plant a new one each year (to replace the one you used).

As you can see, each extra person opting to burn wood would require an additional 15 live trees adding to the forest and all those extra trees are at any moment in time absorbing and locking away 15 times as much CO2 as the one you burn during the course of the year. This is way superior to carbon-neutral - so long as the supply is responsibly managed it can actually help soak up excess carbon dioxide. Renewable, recyclable and scalable energy - there’s not much else that can make a similar claim.

Why Most People Want To Install A Wood Burning Stove

One very big reason that people consider installing a wood burning stove is however rarely mentioned. And the reason is that many folk focus only on the positive aspects and fail to grasp the full costs of buying, installing and maintaining a wood burning stove.

Take the rose tinted glasses off and understand that yes, there are many positive aspects to owning a woodburning stove, but like much else of any value in life, there are both disadvantages and advantages to installing woodburning stoves and it don’t always come cheap or easy. You get what you pay for - though a lot depends of course on what you actually want from your wood burner (which is what this article is all about really).

Finally, you should consider any necessary modifications (such as constructing a flue, fitting a liner to your chimney, etc) and installation costs which can easily be double or triple the cost of buying the woodburner itself. And when you’re done with all that, you’ll have the reality of sourcing wood, storing and loading wood, and having your wood burner and chimney regularly cleaned.

If, having thoroughly checked the many options and costs associated with installing a wood burning stove, you properly understand what’s involved and why you want to do it, the next step is to to look at how to install a woodburning stove.