Wood Stove efficiency:

Today’s wood stove models feature improved safety and efficiency. They produce almost no smoke, minimal ash, and require less firewood. While older uncertified stoves release 15 to 30 grams of smoke per hour; new EPA-certified stoves produce only 2 to 7 grams of smoke per hour. Be sure to look for the EPA certification label on the back of the stove.

Burning firewood can actually improve the environment if proper techniques are used.   When wood heat replaces carbon-producing fuels such as propane, heating oil or electricity from a coal-burning plant, then wood burning has a positive impact on the world-wide carbon footprint. Today, important technological advances have resulted in cleaner burning, higher efficiency wood stoves.

100 percent efficiency?   If you simply built a bonfire inside your home with no flue, it would be 100% efficient for home heat, but your home would fill up with smoke and flue gasses. No matter what type home heat you have, the primary goal is to keep as much of the heat inside the home while still venting all flue gasses. Today’s wood stove models feature improved safety and efficiency. They produce almost no smoke, minimal ash, and require less firewood.

Many high efficient wood stoves have two burn stages. Stage #1 burns the firewood, stage #2 actually re-burns the flue gasses. This additional burn takes place inside the stove. This re-burned flame is heating your home while reducing flue gasses.

How does burning "green" firewood cut my wood stove's efficiency? When a liquid changes to a gas (example: water into steam), a tremendous amount of energy (heat) is absorbed. "Green" firewood contains up to 50% water. This absorbed heat is returned into the outside air when the steam changes back into water vapor.  So, the energy (heat) that is used to evaporate this water in your wood stove is lost as heat to your home.

Fireplace or wood stove?   Designed more for show, traditional open masonry fireplaces should not be considered heating devices. Most home fireplaces are less than 15% efficient. in other words, only 15% of the heat produced by the firewood is used to heat your home. The rest goes up the flue into the outside air. However, many wood stoves are 85% efficient. Fireplaces require a lot of "make up" air. They have large flues with very little control of the exiting flue gasses. The gasses that are vented thru the flue require cold outside air to enter your home to "make up" the warm, inside air that is exiting thru the flue. This "make up" air that must enter your home is at cold, outside, air temperature.

Another problem with a fireplace. When the fire in the fireplace burns out at night, the warm flue will continue to vent warm air from your home.

Links to more of our own pages

• Click here to go to our MAIN Index page. From here you will have access to all of our web pages. We have a page on our favorite sailboats of Lake Erie, our old Cal Yachts homepage, muzzle loading ballastics, my links to everything page and even a page about firewood.

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• How our ancestors cured their ills.Dan's Herbal ole fashioned remedy page. I tried to include many of the herbs that our ancestors used to treat their aches and ills. There are tips on dandelion, burdock and even what leaf to apply when the mosquitos roll in.

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• How our ancestors hunted.. Dan's Muzzle Loading Ballistics page. How much powder did grampa use to bag that Thanksgiving turkey? Who cares? Sombody might... It's all right here.

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Email me a comment about this page. go2erie@sssnet.com  

 You also might enjoy looking at our Apple Creek United Methodist Church website at  http:www.applecreekumc.com

Dan Dalrymple, Wooster, Ohio
This page last updated on August 31, 2014.