Found a good "Modern Heatstoves & Fireplaces" link? Let Us Know!

Basic Information - What you need to know to select a cleaner burning hearth product for your home, including retailers and installers in your area. See also: Clearing the air about wood heating

Making a Fireplace ~ Construction - Miscellaneous Odd Forms - Facings and Mantels - Mending Poor Fireplaces - Fireplace Accessories - Building the Fire

10 Good reasons to heat with wood – short and sweet

All about chimneys  When planning a woodburning system, the first thing you need is reliable advice on matching the appliance to the right type and size of chimney. Most wood heat retailers and chimney sweeps can guide you and there may be government agencies and publications you could get locally. Also, unless you have done it before, we strongly recommend having your chimney professionally installed by someone whose references you have checked. You never want to lie awake at night wondering if an incompetent chimney installation is putting your house and family at risk.

Planning your new hearth A perfect woodburning system is the kind you'll want in your house. This list represents 20 years of experience and over a million dollars in research. See also: How to buy the right wood stove and How to move heat around your house and Successful Fireplaces in Tight Houses

Wood stoves: The most popular wood heating option. A wood stove is the most popular, flexible and economical wood heating option. A stove can be located almost anywhere there is enough space and where its chimney can be properly routed. A perfect installation has the stove located centrally in the main floor living area of the house and the flue pipe running straight up into the chimney. This installation design will provide the best performance and need the least amount of maintenance.

Fireplace inserts: Installed right, they are effective and trouble-free. A fireplace insert is like a wood stove that has been modified by its manufacturer to fit within the firebox of a masonry fireplace. Inserts are used to convert masonry fireplaces, which are inefficient and polluting, into effective heating systems. An insert consists of a firebox surrounded by a steel shell. Air from the room flows between the firebox and shell to be warmed.

Advanced technology stoves: Treat them right and they'll serve you well.

Heating Water with a Wood Stove  Yes it can be done, but it is not easy, cheap, or without risks.

Wood-Fueled Home Heating Systems - Which is Best? With other fuels scarce and expensive, many Floridians are turning to wood for home heating. Today more than 50 U.S. companies make wood stoves, 5 times as many as twenty years ago, and many stoves are imported from foreign countries. A stove buyer will be amazed and confused at the variety available. This publication can help you decide which wood heating system is best for you.

Wood Burning Efficiency and Safety - Tips on proper stove installation, good wood burning practices, and how you can ensure safer heating of your home. Also, see our Clean Burn Fact Sheet (PDF, 1 pp, 391 KB)

Your link goes to an error page when I click on "wood burning efficiency and safety" (it looks like http://www.epa.gov/woodstoves/efficiently.html is no longer available). In case you want to fix this, I have created an alternative version which you may reference instead: http://www.fixr.com/info/wood-burning-efficiency.html I hope you find this useful, Raul Amoros.
Thanks Raul!

Maintenance It is not always possible to generalize accurately about service and maintenance because of the differences among the categories of wood burning equipment. But, here are some suggestions for keeping your wood burner working the way it was intended to.

An Introduction to Home Heating With Wood Wood is an important source of fuel in many Canadian households, and proper wood-burning habits ensure safe, clean, efficient and economical use of your wood stove.

The cholesterol in your stovepipe can be fatal The season is arriving. The garden is ready for its final turning, the apples are picked, and it’s supposed to freeze by the end of the week. So, how is your creosote level? Not your cholesterol, your creosote. It builds up on the inside of your chimney and stove pipe, not your veins, but it could cause similar problems.

NASD: Home Heating with Wood One of the main causes of today's inflation is the price of energy, especially the fossil fuels used to heat many homes as well as to run our vehicles. The interest in alternative energy sources, mainly wood, to heat the home has grown significantly over the past years, largely by moderate income families trying to reduce the bite of inflation but also by a sizeable segment of low income families who simply cannot afford fossil-derived fuels. The following compares economic considerations among energy sources for residential heating.

Heating With Wood: Producing, Harvesting and Processing Firewood, G1554 [PDF] This NebGuide explains the basics of producing, harvesting and processing firewood. See also: Heating with Wood Series which lists links to the complete 7 document series.

Real World Q & A A Searchable Database of over 800 questions and answers concerning the hearth!

How to Burn Wood Safely in Emergency Situations Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Canadian wood heat industry have teamed up to prepare this list of important safety tips for people using a wood stove or fireplace for emergency heating during the power interruption. Excellent info for EVERYONE.

I Heat my house by burning corn In the past ten years, there has been a revival of a heating method so obviously efficient that it is remarkable how few people know of it: using corn for fuel. A corn stove does not burn stalks or left-over cobs. It burns kernels, less than a handful at a time. No, the corn doesn’t snap, crackle, or pop. (One of the things people ask is whether the corn pops as it burns.) Corn contains oil and ethanol, which burn cleaner than other fuels, and more cheaply, too. Once you learn how valuable this reasonably priced source of fuel is, you have to wonder why someone in the government has not caught on to the idea of using corn for more of America’s energy needs.

Check out the Products ! Pictures, Descriptions and Specs on the Leading Brands of Fireplaces, Stoves, Gas Logs, and other Hearth related items.

Choosing and using your wood stove in today's environment. Pretty good article for someone in the market.

Installing a Woodstove. An excellent article with detailed, easy-to-figure-out graphics and very fast loading.

Heat Values In Wood: Covers 27 species. Includes density & weight/cord, BTU’s & Recoverable BTU’s/cord, and Units needed to produce 1million BTU’s. Wow.

Five essentials to getting the most out of your woodpile. No matter how much you admire the sight of a cut and split stack drying in the autumn air, you owe it to yourself to get by with as short a stack as is prudent for the winter in your locale. Here, then, are five strategies for milking the most Btu's out of every stick you burn. Great article by Ike Johnson.

WOOD BURNING Guidelines - Reducing Creosote. Fairly decent article by Shari Blank on an extremely important issue.

Checking It Out - Understanding Pellet Fuel and what to look for in appliances. Note: The following information was prepared by HEARTH Education Foundation, in cooperation with the Hearth Products Association and the Pellet Fuel Institute. If you’re thinking of going the pellet-stove route, you really owe it to yourself to read both parts of this long, interesting and highly informative article

Build a portable woodstove for $30 If I was going to keep going to Colorado each fall, I needed a wood stove for my hunting tent. More than that, there were certain characteristics that my stove had to have. It had to be lightweight. It had to be able to hold a fire overnight. It had to be big enough that I wouldn’t have to get up at night to stoke it. It would be nice if I could also cook on it. And it had to be cheap.

Can a fireplace behave itself in a tight house? Talk about a clash of technologies: In a house that is to be tightly-constructed and well-insulated so it will be cozy and easy to heat, the homebuyers want to have a traditional open fireplace, a device whose design was state-of-the-art a couple of centuries ago. Once built, this new house and old fireplace will not coexist without conflict and the owners might regret reaching back in history to select their fireplace.

Firewood What is the best tree species for firewood? While there is always room for debate, we like to suggest that the best species in your area is the one that is most plentiful, easy to split and doesn't cover your hands and clothes with sticky sap. See also: Wood – the feel good fuel and The Fuel is the Thing and What is a cord, and how to avoid paying too much for one and Some thoughts on stacking firewood and Wood sheds, wood boxes and managing the mess and Plans for a funky wood shed and How to split wood and finally, The best back-saving tip for wood splitting

Wood heat safety One of the benefits of woodburning is giving your family a sense of security. Only a safe installation can do that.

Tips and techniques Everyone develops their own technique to get the best performance from their wood burner. But learning about other people's techniques is always useful. See also: Heating with Wood the "Lazy" Way: Plan Ahead!, Yankee Woodlot ...

The Fireplace Big Freeze Humor from Newsweek. See also: Wood Heat Wisdom

Outdoor Boilers: Outdoor boilers smoke so much that many local jurisdictions have banned them. There are a couple of reasons why outdoor boilers are such notorious smokers. First and most obvious is that the firebox of most units is fully surrounded by a water jacket. While this might be good from a heat transfer point of view, it makes complete combustion of the wood just about impossible. Some outdoor boiler manufacturers compound the problem by running a series of water pipes right through the firebox so the exhaust has to sweep past them to reach the chimney.

Please Read The Website Disclaimer!
Copyright 1986-2012, The Survival & Self-Reliance Studies Institute (SSRsi), All Rights Reserved
Site conceptualized, designed, created & maintained by MEG Raven
Snail Mail: SSRsi, PO Box 2572 Dillon, CO. 80435-2572