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October 20, 2011
There are several different ways to start a wood burning fire in your fireplace and wood stove. Depending on the design and location, some of those methods may be better than others. In any case there are a few basic principles to remember:
* dry wood is required
* start with smaller pieces
When green wood (or new wood) is used to start a fire you can expect a lot of smoke and crackling. You’ll also be wasting a fair amount of heat and energy vaporizing the moisture. Arranging smaller pieces of wood, along with kindling and paper, will allow better airflow and help to get the temperature up. You can then add larger logs as the fire gets going.
The best way to start a wood burning fire may depend on what type of fireplace or wood stove you have. But if you focus on using dry or seasoned firewood in smaller pieces you will be more successful. Enjoy the beauty of a well made fire.
August 28, 2011
A wood burning fireplace and wood stoves are economical ways to heat your home. With the cost of firewood steadier than the rocketing price of heating oil or electricity, many homeowners are switching to wood burning hearth appliances. But it is important that you burn the correct fuel, in order to produce the safest conditions and create clean, efficient heat.
Seasoned Firewood
Available at established firewood suppliers all across the country, seasoned firewood typically comes in a cord – 128 square feet of cut logs that have been dried and are ready for use as an efficient fuel. Most suppliers will have logs from 12″ to 18″ in length. This fuel is easy to transport, fits well in your fireplace or wood stove and burns cleanly.
Slab Wood
Often available from the sawmill, this wood is thin and burns very quickly. It does come in a wide variety of sizes, but most often contains large quantities of bark. When burnt bark creates creosote, a dangerous substance that is the leading cause of chimney fires.
Any money that you may save from buying slab wood will likely be spent on cleaning up the chimney to create safe conditions. It will also be very difficult to attain the long burns that you want during the cold nights of winter.
Avoid the quick savings and opt for higher quality seasoned firewood. Your wood burning fireplace or wood stove will operate as it is meant to and keep your family safe and comfortable.
August 21, 2011
“Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.” Henry David Thoreau is credited with that particular bit of down-east wit and wisdom. Given today’s proliferation of high fructose corn syrup and midriff muffin tops, its meaning has never been more significant.
Ahh, the crackle of a wood fire, the warm glow of ruby-red coals, a soft, smoky aromatic –it’s an experience most of us can conjure without too many mental gymnastics. And given current energy prices, wood may be your perfect heating energy alternative. And thank goodness, unlike those days of yore, you won’t have to don your plaid shirt, grab your axe and summon Babe the Blue Ox in order to clear the “back 40.” Just a simple call or email to a local wood merchant and voila; your cords are delivered and stacked neatly. Now the question becomes; what is the best and most efficient way to burn my new-found energy, and how much wood do I need to brave the cold, hard winter ahead?
Fortunately, the answers come easily from the friendly folks here at Fireplace Village. We have experts to recommend just the right product to keep all your water pipes from freezing and meet your budget as well. Our staff can calculate the number of BTU’s it takes to heat your home and then translate that data into the approximate amount of wood you’ll require to keep the whole family warm and toasty. Even better, we can schedule an in-home consultation—face to face; on your turf. Our knowledgeable sales associates can also explain about Uncle Sam’s 10% tax credit on most wood burning stoves and inserts…enough to scare the livin’ knots out of Pinocchio!!
Additionally, as authorized dealers of Napoleon, Hearthstone, Heat & Glo, Jǿtul and Vermont Castings, we can assist in choosing a fireplace insert or freestanding wood stove model that best fits your needs and those of your family. If you already have a fireplace, the right insert can heat your home efficiently and stop all those precious BTUs from escaping up the chimney. But don’t worry, if you have no chimney, options are available for outside venting too! There’s more than one way warm the cockles of your heart.
And finally, our experienced technicians offer complete installation of your wood burner and will even start your first fire if you are so inclined. We can set up annual maintenance and cleaning programs too—we do it all—what more could you ask for? So, why not give Fireplace Village a call at any one of our local, convenient locations—you’ll be glad you did.
August 19, 2011
The quality of the firewood burned in your fireplace or wood stove will directly affect the cleanliness and efficiency of your hearth. Follow these quick tips on how to buy firewood to ensure a safe, affordable heating season this year.
1) Only buy seasoned firewood. This means it will have been cut into the appropriate sizes soon after being chopped down and should have been dried well before coming onto the market. Look for a large quantity of checks or cracks in the end of the firewood – this indicates that the firewood has been seasoned.
2) Buy a top quality species. Oak and hickory are preferred for firewood and produce a long lasting, clean burning fire in modern hearth appliances. Pine may be mixed in with the higher quality species and is fine to use as kindling. Ask at the wood lot to get further details on the species included.
3) Be sure you are getting the right amount of firewood. Buy your firewood by the cord if at all possible. This is generally offered in sizes ranging from 16 to 24” and totals 128 square feet (4 feet high x 4 feet deep x 8 feet wide).
August 5, 2011
Wood stoves and wood burning fireplaces require plenty of fuel to make it through the heating season. And homeowners need to consider the best ways of storing firewood. For maximum safety and efficiency, follow these top three tips to keeping your firewood close at hand:
- Bring in only the amount of firewood you can easily and safely store – you need to have a dry storage location (shed, rack or airy storage room), but filling that location beyond its capacity is a dangerous and unwise move, resulting in lower quality firewood and more waste.
- Keep the bulk of your stored firewood at least 15 feet from the house or major structures – this protects your home from bug or pest infestation, should the log pile become a nest or home base from these critters. That doesn’t mean you don’t keep a small amount close by, though, as the third tip proves.
- Bring in a small amount of firewood at least 24 hours before you plan to use it – this will allow for even more dry time and more efficient burning, as well as being convenient.
There are a few steps to storing firewood, but keeping the fuel dry and safe at all stages of the game is most important.
August 4, 2011
It is said that history repeats itself, and apparently there’s truth to the theory. Let’s take home heating, for example. Originally, most houses in the colonial United States were heated with wood. Given the size of most homes of the time, one fireplace was able to keep the family warm, if not totally comfortable. The hearth was centrally located where meals were prepared and where the family gathered for indoor chores, reading, schoolwork and discussion.
As incomes and families grew, new homes were built with multiple rooms requiring more than one fireplace to distribute warmth. A far cry from efficiency, room by room heating was replaced during the late nineteenth century, by central heating systems. At first they were mostly coal fired, requiring much time be spent stoking, banking and removing “clinkers” or unburnable waste from the fire box. The smoke emitted from chimneys was acrid, smelly and soot-laden. Immediately after World War II, oil was plentiful, and along with natural gas and propane, began to provide evenly distributed residential heat with little cost and maintenance.
That’s where we find ourselves today. Most modern homes have large furnaces, which, while burning efficiently, heat more area than can be used by a typical family at any one time. With the cost of energy on the rise, heating rooms not immediately in use is wasteful and expensive versus space heating. Therefore, many are considering “point of use” heating or “zoning.” Here’s how it works.
Families spend time together in one room of the home; let’s call it a great or family room. In order to ensure comfort, many have discovered gas, wood or pellet fireplace inserts or parlor stoves which adequately heat the gathering area—the thermostat for the large furnace or boiler can then set at 65 degrees or lower. Additionally, depending upon the parlor heater’s make and model, venting may not be required, and the old “brick and mortar” chimneys are completely unnecessary. Both Jǿtul and Vermont Castings make a variety of stoves and inserts as do Heat & Glo, Napoleon, Majestic and Hearthstone. They make installation of a new fireplace insert or stove easy and inexpensive and rely on a number of different fuels such as natural gas, propane, wood and wood pellets. Most importantly, your family is more comfortable reading, playing games or watching television—together.
Think about it; because you are heating only one room past 65 degrees, your precious and expensive fuel is “sipped’ rather than “gulped;” while temperatures throughout the rest of the house are lower—actually more conducive to a good night’s sleep. Along the way, fewer hydrocarbons are released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases; you save money on fuel and everybody wins! What more can you ask for?
So why not visit the friendly folks at Fireplace Village where we have solutions. Our expert staff can help you design the best option for your home and pocketbook, then have it installed at your convenience, and before the snow flies. All the while you’ll be saving money, helping conserve our natural resources and contributing less pollution to our atmosphere. With energy prices rising at an alarming rate, you’ll be “on track” to save while your family enjoys the warm, comfortable and yes, “entertaining” atmosphere your home was built to provide.
July 17, 2011
Regular maintenance of your wood burning fireplace or wood stove is very important. And cleaning out ashes is a simple, necessary step. Many wood burning hearth users wonder when they should be cleaning out those ashes and how often the task is required.
It depends entirely on how often you burn. The more times your wood burning fireplace or wood stove is in use, the more ashes it will create and the more often you will need to clean them out. Remember to leave approximately 1 to 2 inches of ash on the bottom of your stove at all times for durability. Otherwise, practice good maintenance and clean the ashes out as they collect. Always use the proper equipment for handling the ash, including quality fireplace accessories like shovels and ash buckets. Many homeowners find the ash vacuums make the job quick and easy. Visit Fireplace Village to browse through their selection of fireplace accessories to help you get this necessary task done.
June 26, 2011
Scaling Up Residential Biomass Heating:
A Stakeholder Symposium
Yates Training Room
US Forest Service
201 14th St. SW (14th & Independence)
Washington, DC
Wednesday, July 13, 2011, 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Wood heat provides 80% of residential renewable energy in America, solar PV 15% and geothermal 5%. While older wood burning appliances are common, bringing modern, low-emission appliances to scale is one of the most cost effective ways to reduce residential fossil fuel use. Wood heat enjoys a deep cultural acceptance in America but policies to harness and transform it are lacking. This symposium explores the opportunities for policy makers to maximize the potential of residential wood heat to reduce fossil fuel use in a tight fiscal climate, while minimizing its drawbacks. The speakers will cover the policy landscape, sustainability and emissions issues, state and federal case studies and results of a new study on biomass heat incentives.
The Symposium is free and open to the public, but space is limited and an RSVP is required for admittance into the building. For inquiries, please contact the Alliance for Green Heat, Jordan Townsend at 301-841-7755.
Register Here
June 24, 2011
Wood heat provides 80% of residential renewable energy in America, solar PV 15% and geothermal 5%.
Newer, modern, low-emission wood burning appliances are one of the most cost effective ways to reduce residential fossil fuel use. Wood is one of our largest renewable energy sources.
June 20, 2011
We found the following article on wood burning heat at the Marc Gunther Sustainability Blog thanks to our friends at the Alliance for Green Heat:
No Silicon Valley venture capitalist has invested in it.
Government subsidies for it are skimpy, at best.
It lacks clout in Washington.
And it’s been around forever.
Yet it’s by far the most popular form of renewable energy used at home, dwarfing the impact of rooftop olar panels and appealing not just to well-to-do greens but to poor people, African-Americans and, we’d bet, climate change deniers, too.
Yep, I’m talking about–as Popular Mechanics put it recently-the “high-tech, cutting-edge, carbon-neutral alternative fuel of the future: wood.”
About 80% of residential renewable energy is created by wood heat appliances (not including fireplaces), while some 15 million American homes use wood as a primary or secondary heat source.
What’s new are the arrival of modern high-efficiency wood stoves, as well as a fast-growing wood pellet industry, that enable either cordwood or wood pellets to be burned more cleanly that before, dramatically reducing emissions of soot.
Provided the wood burned in these stoves comes from waste or from well-managed forests, it can then be deemed an environmentally friendly fuel: as it is seen in much of western Europe.
Last week, I met with John, a lawyer and former human rights activist. Wood heat, he argues, is social justice and jobs issue, as well as an environmental solution. It’s a low-cost and low-carbon way to heat homes. It’s a “green” technology that appeals to poor and working class people. And, because gathering and distributing wood is labor intensive, it generates economic activity.
Popular Mechanics calculated the annual costs of heating a house using various fuels and estimated wood well below fuel oil, propane gas and electricity.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, a dollar spent on wood buys more GHG reductions than competing clean technologies, he said. It’s way more effective than turning biomass in the form of corn into ethanol. The drawback of burning wood is that even efficient stoves produce some particulate pollution, so they should not be used in places like Los Angeles or Denver where smog remains a problem. “It’s not for everyone and it’s not for everywhere,” John said.
But as is so often the case with environmental or health problems–think about excessive packaging, or overly-processed foods–solutions lie not in some futuristic technology but in the past.
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