Wood Stoves

As the winter months approach people start worrying about the rising electricity bills. But it is possible to heat your room and stay comfortable without blowing up that bill so much. All you need to do is to use a wood stove instead of that electric heater.

However, wooden stoves are more than just a piece of equipment that can heat the room. Unlike electric heaters, there is an artistic appeal to a wood stove. You can attribute a style language to the design of a stove. It can be a traditional stove with cast iron exteriors and a large firebox, or it can be a futuristic looking steel stove with a chrome finish with a large glass panel that will let you watch the fire dancing inside the stove. In either case, you get both functionality and a decorative element from a wood stove. But before you start shopping for them, read this article to know more about wood stoves and how to buy the right one.

A beginner’s guide to buying wood stoves

Although the basic idea of a wood stove is simple, there are more complex things that go into a modern wood stove. Almost all of them come with a set of handy features, from temperature control to motors that move the wood pellets from the hopper to the fire pit. These stoves have come a long way over the centuries. Because of all these advancements, selecting a stove has become difficult. There are thousands of different models to choose from. To make a decision regarding which one to buy, you have to know the basics of different types of stoves out there.

Wood pellet stoves

These stoves use pellets of compressed wood or biomass as fuel. Interestingly, these stoves can burn more than just wood. You can use compressed pellets of soybeans, corn, cherry pits, etc. as fuel in these stoves. That means the fuel cost is going to be really cheap. Also, as all of these fuels are waste materials, the environmental impact of wood & pellet stoves is pretty minimal. They come in with both automatic and manual options. If it is automatic, you don’t have to adjust the fire in the stoves after setting the temperature. The temperature sensor in the stove will control the amount of fuel that moves into the burn pit of the stove.

Different combustion processes

When you think about a wood stove, you might think of a burn pit in which you throw in some wood fuel and burn it to heat the room. Although that is the basic idea behind a wood stove, a modern stove is more complex than that. These days wood stoves come with automatic temperature controls, motors that regulate the movement of the fuel, and catalytic combustors. The more feathers a stove has, the more expensive it is going to be. The design and working of the combustion chamber also vary from model to model. All of these technologies make sure that a stove gives out a steady amount of heat without any work.

Heat output of a stove

There are a couple of different units that are used to measure the heat output of a wood-burning fireplace or a wood stove. Basically, the heat output of a stove is the amount of time that it requires to raise a particular quantity of water by one unit of temperature. The exact thermal unit depends on the metric system your country follows. In countries that follow the metric system, it is the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. Those who follow the imperial units define it as the amount of heat required for raising the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.

Size of the stove

When it comes to a wood-burning fireplace, the size matters a lot. Not only does the size determine the ability of the stove to generate heat, but it also determines whether or not it is fit for your home. The majority of the size of a stove is due to the size of the firebox or burn pit. Stoves that have a large firebox can burn large pieces of wood and generate more heat. Large pieces of wood can also burn for longer hours. This, in turn, can affect the burn time of a given stove. But in the end, you should be able to accommodate such a stove in your house. So, think about how much space you have in your house for the stove.