Wood is a classic choice for heating your home. It provides ample heat, a pleasant ambiance and an environmentally friendly heating option. When you decide to heat your home with wood, you’ll also find ample options for wood-burning appliances.
While a traditional, open-hearth fireplace may come to mind when you think of wood as a heating source, open-hearth fireplaces make a poor source of heating. Open-hearth fireplaces pull warm air from your room into the firebox and send the majority of the fire’s heat up the chimney.
There are many EPA-certified wood heating appliances that operate efficiently and allow you to lower your home-heating bills. By placing a wood stove or EPA-certified fireplace in your home’s main living space, you can keep the primary rooms of your home warm while turning down the thermostat for the rest of your home. They can even be used during a power outage to help keep your home warm!
The primary options for wood-burning appliances include:
Wood Stoves
Wood stoves are freestanding heating stoves, made from cast iron or steel. They offer an excellent source of heat because they emit heat from all four sides of the stove. They can be placed in your main living space, or they can be placed elsewhere in the home and hooked up to a duct system to circulate the heat throughout your home. Wood boilers also can be placed outside your home.
Fireplace inserts
As the name suggests, fireplace inserts are put within a pre-built firebox and hooked up to a chimney. They provide the look of a traditional wood-burning fireplace but the efficiency and heat of a wood stove. Fireplace inserts can be built into newly constructed fireplaces, or they can be retrofit into an existing fireplace space. If the insert is replacing and existing fireplace, the fireplace installer will have to verify that the existing chimney is appropriate for the new insert. A new chimney or chimney liner may be needed.
Pellet stoves and inserts
Pellet stoves provide the look, feel and heat of a log-burning fireplace, but with more convenience and ease of use. Pellet stoves burn compressed, dehydrated wood pellets. The pellets, purchased in 40 pound bags, are loaded into a hopper then automatically fed into the burning chamber. One load of pellets can burn for up to 24 hours, which means that your home remains at a constant temperatures while you’re sleeping or while you’re out running errands. The pellets are championed by environmentalists as a green heating option: The pellets are made from a natural source, burn cleanly and have no more carbon emissions than if the wood would have decomposed naturally.
If you think a wood-burning appliance might be the right heating option for your home, call the fireplace experts at Tri-County Hearth & Patio. We’ll help you find the fireplace or stove type that fits your home’s heating needs and your home’s style.