We forget just how big the market is for wood burning stoves and solid fuel appliances. Done are the days where your home is heated by putting fuel on an open fireplace without any thought. With modern technology, it has created a variety of cleaner, safer options for your home – from freestanding wood burning stoves that evoke that nostalgic warmth of cuddling up during cold winters, to pellet stoves that offer convenience without sacrificing the beautiful flame, there is an appliance to fit every home.
Cleaner Choice Stoves
When you purchase a wood burning stove, it is important that you make not only the right choice to suit your home, but also the right choice for the environment. With cleaner choice appliances, they offer minimized emissions and easily understandable operating instructions, guaranteeing you can warm up your home safely.
Stove manufacturers of a range of styles, sizes and aesthetics have committed to making the cleaner choice, offering:
- Wood Burning Stoves
- Multifuel Stoves
- Pellet Stoves
The Cleaner Choice mark makes it easy to find a stove that will keep you warm, maximizing heat while minimizing emissions.
Wood Burning Stoves
Typically called a wood burner, log burner or simply a stove, a wood burning stove to be exact, is the most popular type of appliance used to burn solid fuel in homes. Like their name suggests, wood burning stoves burn wood fuel to produce heat, warming a room.
With all appliances, wood burners should only burn materials that they are designed to burn. Ready to Burn wood fuel (firewood or briquettes) should be used in a wood burner – burning wet, treated, or waste wood significantly increases the build-up of dangerous deposits in a chimney, causing potentially fatal hazards.
What is a free-standing wood burner?
A free-standing wood burner is the most popular style of appliances, and certainly is the style you are most familiar with. These are the kind of appliances that stand freely, either supported by legs or a pedestal, and offer the highest level of freedom with where they can be installed in your home.
What is an insert wood burner?
When it comes to the insert wood burner, they are directly built into a fireplace or chimney breast, utilizing the space to sit flush within the wall. These are a bit less common than free-standing stoves, but still offer the same warmth to your home and a great view of a roaring fire.
What is a wood-burning cooking stove?
These are primarily free-standing wood burners with an additional chamber for cooking. The heat from the fire can be used to cook your food while your home is being heated, all while offering a dual functionality. Although some cooking stoves are multifuel stoves, allowing you to burn smokeless fuels as well as wood fuel.
Multifuel Stoves
With the multifuel stoves, they can burn wood fuel, just like wood burners but has the additional functionality of being able to burn smokeless fuels. Multifuel stoves are constructed differently to wood burners, allowing them to burn a wider range of fuels. All due to the grate in the interior allowing air to flow through and aid the combustion of smokeless fuels.
While multifuel stoves can burn multiple types of fuel, it is also important to not burn multiple types of fuel at the same time to avoid damaging the stove.
Pellet Stoves
These stoves are closely related to wood burners and multifuel stoves, they can operate under the same principle – combusting solid fuel to generate heat and supply it to your room – but have some unique differences. Pellet stoves are designed to burn pellets (compressed wood formed into small pellets) and allow for autonomous electrical operation, as opposed to a log burner’s manual operation.
This kind of stove can be digitally operated by the user. Electrical components in the stove will regulate the chosen temperature by gradually feeding pellets from the hopper as the fuel burns, maintaining the specified temperature.
Boiler Stoves
This stove can be a wood burner, multifuel stove, or even a pellet stove. Stoves as such, can connect to a specialized hot water cylinder, allowing the heat from the fuel to be used to heat water as well as your home.
A boiler stove can provide hot water to your home, heating up water from your taps or even your radiators, adding an extra benefit to your stove.
It is impossible to convert a boiler stove to a standard wood burner or multifuel stove, all due to the dangers that are present with boiler stove installations. It is advised that you speak to a qualified engineer and get a professional to remove the necessary components from the appliance before using it just to heat your room. Pressure build-up in the water jacket can have potentially disastrous effects.
Cast Iron or Steel?
These are the two most common materials used to construct stoves. Each one offers their own advantages, so now it comes down to personal preference when choosing your stove.
When it comes to cast iron, it is the more traditional material, offering you the classic stove look while also boasting excellent heat retention. This means all while this may take a bit more time to get your room warmed, it’ll keep warming your room long after your fire has gone out.
Steel has now become the most popular alternative material to cast iron in the recent years, due to its increased design flexibility. It can be manufactured into much more sleek, modern shapes than cast iron. This allows manufacturers to create stylishly modern stoves that won’t compromise on performance.
When you are in the process of buying your dream appliance, be sure to consider the heating needs. There are a variety of options available, letting you burn comfortably and with the correct solid fuel that is suitable for your appliance.