My experience with fireplaces is that the house winds up net-colder, but you can warm yourself with radiant heat while it burns. Freestanding wood stoves on the other hand are very capable of warming a large space.
Sadly, most wood stoves are not tight, nor are most users experienced.
It does require yearly maintenance to grease the motor and I had to undergo some repairs when we bought it (used, it came with the house) because the previous owners did some really dodgy stuff like using a completely wrong sized fuse and taping it in with duct tape, mangling the fuse holder, but it has been reliable for over a decade now.
For the uninitiated, take a look at the forums at hearth.com.
When you start a fire you want to quickly get the stove up to temperature. Use small split logs and kindling sticks along with some kind of “candle” that burns long enough to get the flames going. Commercial fire lighters (kerosine wax bricks) or even just a bit of kitchen towel with a tablespoon of vegetable oil will do.
The kindling and your first log will burn hot and bright with an attractive yellow flame — like a campfire. At the end of this first burn you will build up a layer of red hot wood embers in the base of the firebox and the ironwork will be about half way to temperature.
The next stage and each stage after that is to put on a much smaller load — often I will just use a single large log — and leave the air intake or door ajar, temporarily. The hot embers will rapidly get the new log hot and the whole thing will instantly go from glowing red to an inferno in under a minute.
At that point you have achieved a self sustaining reactor. You can leave it running full throttle if you want the pretty yellow flames. It will only last 20 minutes though and all the energy will blast up the chimney.
Much better, and indeed the whole reason for having a wood stove over an open grate, is to now shut off almost all of the airflow to the firebox. Low airflow means the combustion goes right down — you may not even see any flames if you go super low — but it also means the stove isn’t being constantly cooled by a high volume of airflow.
If you balance it just right then the flame front of burning wood gas will sit above the logs and permeate the whole chamber. It looks like a cross between Aurora borealis and a Backdraft (1991) slo-mo sequence — a deep red wraith that flaps around slowly, completely unlike the sooty yellow flames you began with. You get a real feeling for how it’s the gas not the wood that’s burning. (Having a stove with a glass viewing window really opened my eyes to their operation.)
A single 10” log — quarter split from a 20” diameter ash tree and air dried for 18 months to <20% moisture content — will now produce 10kW for an hour or more and stay burning for eight. The fire will “keep” overnight and in the morning you can put on a new log, fire it up with the door ajar, and be back at full capacity in minutes.
What’s interesting is that if you run the stove in pretty mode — like a cartoon open fireplace with crackling and burning and yellow flames with the vents or even the whole front door open — you’ll notice that parts of the stove might not even get hot. The iron air intake grill on mine will remain at room temperature because although the flames are vigorous, the airflow is so fast it keeps the stove body cool.
Conversely, once the stove has been running for an hour in slow burn mode, the entire body is practically glowing and requires thick gloves to handle. It is wonderful.
Would love a video if you can find one to see exactly what you're talking about.
I just replaced the old stove in my house with a new catalyst model and I burn 30% less wood while providing more steady even heat. I am heating 4000 sqft 2 story with only wood heat, one load every 12 hours, house between 80 and 64 degrees depending on location.
Wood heat is great!
I opted for a blaze king catalyst stove. It’s probably the nicest stove utilitarian stove you can buy if you want to heat a large space and want to control temp outputs. Downside is cat replacements every 5 or so years, but that’s not a big deal and worth the benefits.
Lots of good options out there!
For Power outages and also coz its just awesomely warm: propane fireplace. All the benefits of a wood fireplace with none of the downsides.
What this means is that we don't worry about "oh how about we all go ice skating" just turn the fireplace off without worrying about a fire. No indoor air quality issues. Electricity is out? Sure no fan but who cares. Still warm (and some have battery backup fans). Have to start it up without electricity? No problem, pilot lights w/ piezo starter. Propane delivery isn't that different from having to stockpile the firewood.
Edit: Downvote? I really want to know why you disagree, please respond! What am I missing?
Also, either the "way to keep the tank warm" would probably be an electric heater (which would fail in these corner cases) or else a small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.
Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.
It's more or less a one-time cost and you might want the simplicity. Tradeoffs rather than it being inevitable.
And multiple fuel jets aren't enough. If you can't depend on the propane, then you need a lot of backup fuel.
> small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.
You have fire that's not very far anyway. It's not hard for an expert to design something that's safe, since you don't need all that much heat.
> Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.
If you prefer keeping the tank design the same, that sounds fine. A tiny pump would take barely any power, so a cheap solid-state generator attached to the burner could run it and charge your phone too. You don't even need a battery to get things going; a 1 pound tank could be warmed by hand if everything else goes wrong.
(Farmers buy diesel in bulk and don't pay road tax on it. It's illegal to put the untaxed diesel into a pickup that ever leaves the farm.)
Why is that?
EDIT: Oh are you saying that the rate of heating provided by the fire is less than the overall rate of heat leaving the entire house?
As a result, the room where the fireplace is will be warmer but the rest the house is typically colder.
... unless the extra peripheral heat loss freezes pipes.
Then again Ben Franklin figured out how to make a fireplace that worked yet most don't.
AFAIK in europe having outside air intake in stove is mandated by law. You can not use it, but all newly built houses have outside intake if someone was planning on adding wood stove. You also need to have proper vent near your stove, so even if it uses inside air, it will typically get it through that. I have automatic pellet burning furnace in basement for normal heating needs (it starts automatically when needed, uses 3 temperature sensors on floors and in basement) and wood stove for "romantic" purposes, but when it's fired, it heats up almost whole house and pellet stove sees that no more heating is needed. I have lots of leftover wood from construction phase, so wood stove will pay itself back from reduced use of pellet.
As for losing heat through chimney - properly mounted and operated wood stove doesn't lose that much heat through chimney. Most of them have long enough steel pipe from stove to chimney, which reuses some heat from exhaust and ventilation channels in chimney, which are heating incoming air.
How this works out in terms of net heat gained/lost will depend on the fireplace design, but, from what I hear, it's not uncommon for this to be a net-loss type of situation.
The smoke is poison, and unlike a furnace, gas fireplace, firebox, or wood stove, there is no heat exchanger, so you can't capture any of the heat out of the flue gasses.
It's counter-intuitive, I know. But this is why everybody congregated around the hearth in the days of fireplaces.
Different places, different 'customs' i.e. systems we are used to. All have their pros and cons and sometimes it's just that we don't know that different systems exist.
We had fireplace powered central heating -— radiators throughout the house linked to pipes behind the firebox. In the morning I’d wake up to ice on the inside of the windows, and by my teenage years it was my job to head downstairs and light the coal fire first thing in the morning. It worked well once the fire was up and running.
This was in the ‘90s btw, I’m not _that_ old.
Back in the day (i.e. 1700s) everyone heated with fireplaces. And many of them (e.g. 2nd floor ones) weren't that big.
Seems like it could be fixed with a simple design change.
But I am not a fireplace lawyer so I won't profess to know.
Almost without comment. All I will say is that we have some friends in Germany living in the 'countryside' (as much as that's still a thing in densely populated Germany) that heat their main living area with one of these (way less elaborate design lol). My grandma had one of these sitting in the wall between kitchen (right next to the eating area) and the living room.
[1] https://www.heatilator.com/owner-support/troubleshooting-and...
Ride the bike to start the heater in a blackout
I suppose if you can afford it, go for both and have multiple reduncancy.