WOOD BURNING FACTS: Smoke and creosote is actually half of the fuel value in any wood. Today’s high-tech stoves are able to burn these waste products as fuel to heat your home. The more you cut down the air, the less wood you burn, and more smoke is made which then goes to work for you, heating your home. When you burn smoke, you do not have to carry it in, and it makes no ash, so you do not have to carry it back out! Smoke takes up no room inside the stove, so today’s wood burners are much more powerful, yet are compact. The new generation wood stoves use half the wood as stoves from the 70’s and 80’s, hold a fire a very long time, have self-cleaning glass, and you see the smoke burning as a second layer of flame boiling around at the top of the firebox. We heat our 3600 square foot showroom entirely with one stove, which easily holds a fire 15 hours plus. WE HAVE NO HEAT BILL! Today’s wood burners are cleaner, safer, and more efficient than you can imagine! Sick of high heat bills? Read on…
The Lopi Liberty wood burning stove heats our showroom! Buy now, 2008 models still in stock!
4 Ways You Can Add High-Efficiency Wood Heat To Your Home:
1. ADD A FREESTANDING WOODSTOVE: This is the most popular and cost-effective option which offers the most choices of sizes, styles, and techniques to burn smoke. If you can spare four to five feet of blank wall space, you can usually add a stove and insulated stainless steel chimney system easily.
2. ADD A FIREPLACE INSERT TO AN EXISTING, BUT INEFFICIENT WOOD BURNING FIREPLACE: A fireplace insert is just a short woodstove designed to slide into an existing fireplace that is fully capable of safely burning wood. This method is simple if you have a working wood burning full masonry fireplace (built block by block, brick by brick, or rock by rock). Sometimes, it is necessary for either safety or proper performance to reline the chimney with a stainless steel liner pipe that connects directly to the top of the insert and funnels all exhaust into it. Inserts normally have blowers to blow heat out and can be almost as efficient as freestanding models. There are also pre-fab (factory built) wood burning fireplaces that vent with stainless steel pipes. They may be faced with rock or brick, but these still require a special “pre-fab” rated insert. If your pre-fab fireplace will only accept an insert too small to suit you, see method #3 below.
3. HAVE A USELESS GAS FIREPLACE? TINY PRE-FAB (FACTORY-BUILT) WOOD FIREPLACE TOO SMALL FOR AN INSERT? REPLACE IT! There are compact but high-efficiency “zero-clearance” wood burning fireplaces available which frame right into the wood framing left after removing the existing unit. There are several choices in very compact “build-in stoves” that build in like a fireplace but perform like a stove. Size does matter! After determining the approximate size of your old unit, it may or may not be possible to replace it with high efficiency built-in wood burner. We call this a “tear-out,” which may involve removing the fireplace facing (brick tile, stone around the unit) and also replacing it, and is more involved than the previous methods.
4. ADD A HIGH-EFFICENCY WOODBURNING BUILT-IN FIREPLACE TO A BLANK WALL. Unlike adding a freestanding stove, this method usually costs more to achieve a fireplace effect while still enjoying the same efficiency as a stove. If you dislike the look of a freestanding unit, it may be worth the extra cost to have a unit that can easily heat your home, yet still achieve the traditional fireplace look you want along with a mantel and hearth. When this remodeling project is finished, it will appear that the fireplace was built at the same time as your home. There are models available in sizes to heat up to 3000 square feet. Some of the larger ones will fool you into thinking that they are just a standard fireplace with a pretty set of arched glass doors. This method greatly boosts the resale value of your home.
SEE CUSTOM FIREPLACES FOR DETAILS!