How To Safely Keep Warm Burning Wood

There’s a lot to recommend about heating with wood. I’ve enjoyed wood heat over the years. Sitting by a warm fire can be very relaxing and is often the social focal point of the home during the colder months. Burning wood will also cost you a lot less money than other forms of heat and it’s much easier to install. However, there are also things you need to be aware of if you’re going to burn wood safely and cleanly.

When you heat with wood, you can’t neglect cleaning your chimney or you’ll create a fire hazard for yourself before very long. Every year, residue in the chimney and flue must be cleaned out. If you don’t want to hire someone, you can do it yourself as long as you do it thoroughly. Hardware stores have devices you can use to pull through your chimney that will scrub it. However, if you encounter blockage you can’t break through don’t use your stove until blockage been cleared.

Always burn hard woods and be sure the wood you burn isn’t green. When wood is first cut, it’s high in moisture content and it needs to age or it won’t burn. Stack it where it can dry undisturbed until it’s ready to be burned. I don’t burn any wood that’s less than a year old. Wood that isn’t sufficiently aged will be hard to light, it won’t deliver much heat value and it will tend to leave creosote behind. 

What sort of stove do you own? If you want to get value out of the wood you burn, you need to use an air tight stove, preferably one that’s been EPA certified. It will use less wood than a stove that isn’t air tight and it will burn cleaner as well. When you burn less wood, you save both money and labor, so making an investment in an air tight stove will pay you back with greater value. I know that personally.

Never burn garbage in your stove or anything treated with substances that release toxins into the air. Once something has been treated with chemicals, including wood that’s been pressure-treated or painted, it should not be burned in a stove. Take it to your local dump and talk with the person there about how to dispose of it properly.

Burning wood requires more attention than other forms of heat, so it’s tempting with wood to damp down your stove so it will burn longer. However, whenever you damp down a stove you’re encouraging an incomplete burn. When wood isn’t completely burned, it smolders and leaves a sticky residue called creosote that clings to the inside of your chimney and it’s very flammable. Build up enough creosote in your chimney and you’ll have a chimney fire. To avoid this outcome, don’t damp down your stove very often or buy a store with a catalytic converter in it. Catalytic converters will protect your chimney from creosote buildup and they’ll remove particulates that pollute the air.

If you want to save money burning cord wood, buy your wood green a year ahead of when you’re going to use it. The difference in price between green and aged wood is considerable and you can save a lot of money this way

There’s a lot of talk about pellet stoves now. Wood pellets are a byproduct of saw mill waste so they don’t require cutting down fresh trees. Using pellets also takes less effort than splitting cord wood. The pellets burn hot and very efficiently. However, pellet stoves and fireplace inserts that burn pellets are a lot more expensive than a very good, air tight stove that burns cord wood.

I hope this was useful information.  Please check back next week to see how to properly clean out your wood stove.