Wood heaters are having a come-back, and with good reason too. Convective wood heaters, those that not only give off heat from the flames and coals (like a common fireplace does) but that also heats up itself and gives off even more heat (like a combustion stove, for example) are the most energy efficient when it comes to heating up a room or a larger area.
If you live in an area where it is easy to gather firewood and you have a suitable location to store it in where it won’t get damp gas heaters or wet, then you may want to look into the possibility of using a wood heater. Popular wood heater choices are the pot-belly stove and combustion stoves. Combustion stoves can do far more than just heat a room, but they also make very good ovens and stove tops, and can even be used to heat up a hot water cylinder. You can leave them on all night, just stoking them up again in the morning and adding more wood. Usually a fan is used to help circulate the warm air around the room.
A simple wood heater can be found, that is a standalone fireplace type, which is used solely to generate heat. They’re often made from cast iron and have a clear glass front, and sometimes a flue going up from them. They heat up nicely, and if they have a fan system installed they can generate and circulate heat around a room quite nicely.
The wood stove heater is, as its name implies, a combination wood heater and stove. The slow burning combustion stove, mentioned above, is perhaps the most economical and the more efficient type. They include not only hot plates on top of the stove, and the necessary fire cabinet itself, but they also have an oven that works very well for all baking needs.
If you’re interested in looking into this, I’d suggest you talk to someone who uses this type of heating and find out the pro’s and con’s and whether they seem like they’d be useful for you. Of course, one pro when it comes to wood heating is that you can have it all winter long, even if there’s no electricity! They also give a room a nice, warm, homey atmosphere which is one of the things I like best about them.
alexjames