Guide to Wood and Coal Stoves

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Beyond the cozy charm of a wood stove lies the practicality of an increasingly needed heat source.
Beyond the cozy charm of a wood stove lies the practicality of an increasingly needed heat source.
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Diagram of a pellet stove.
Diagram of a pellet stove.
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First-generation, modern, airtight wood stoves were little more than well-sealed boxes.
First-generation, modern, airtight wood stoves were little more than well-sealed boxes.
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Warming up some tea on top of an old wood-burning stove is one of the coziest ways to start a winter morning.
Warming up some tea on top of an old wood-burning stove is one of the coziest ways to start a winter morning.

If you’re like me, you’ve been heating and cooking with wood long enough that you don’t want another lecture about the cozy charm of a wood fire, the money you can save over electric heat, why to clean your flue or how to stack a cord of wood. What you may want to know, however, is why you cant get an efficient, new wood stove anymore without paying hundreds of dollars extra for a government-approved catalytic smoke combuster or “Hi-Tech” stove; how the wood smoke that we once considered benign can degrade our air quality, endangering health and property; and how the new government presence in home in home heating affects your use or sale of the “low-tech” INTREPID, KODIAK or ASHLEY airtight wood stove (or the faithful old coal-burner) that has warmed you for years.
 

How We Got Here

In a sense, what went around is coming around again. Ben Franklin invented wood stoves to increase efficiency of fuel-gobbling, radiant-heating, colonial fireplaces when coastal U.S. forests were being cut out and fuel costs were rising in the first “energy crisis.” The first Franklin Fireplace enclosed a smaller fire in an open iron box with a smaller draft outlet, both conserving fuel and creating convection currents that distributed more heat through the room. It was later fitted with doors to increase efficiency even more.

During the 19th Century, Franklin’s idea was elaborated into wood- and coal-burning stoves in a thousand designs: potbellies, parlor heaters, columnar stoves, and cook ranges. They were made of cast iron, sheet metal, and channel-iron-framed soapstone—many adorned with nickel-plated foot rests, handles, and ornamentation. As fuel had to be hauled ever-greater distances at ever-greater cost, stoves were designed to be ever more efficient, employing multiple draft controls, serpentine smoke channels, and long runs of stove pipe to extract the last bit of heat from a chunk of fuel. And airtight stoves are nothing new: in some parlor-heaters from the late 1800s, doors and draft outlets were milled to fit as snugly as any on a modern gasketed stove.

  • Published on Dec 1, 1992
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