By Chris Schille •
June 15, 2008
Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.
Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the seventh in an eight-part series. If adding thermal mass to your house isn’t realistic, another approach is to install a massive heater. That is to say, the heater contains the thermal mass your house may lack.
Clean and Super-Efficient Wood Heating
Super-efficient wood burning heaters with lots of mass are called by many names: masonry stoves, russian stoves, finnish stoves or finnish fireplaces, mass heaters. Though mass heaters may look like traditional fireplaces, they’re actually very sophisticated heating devices.
Burning wood in a mass heater doesn’t involve feeding in wood a few pieces at a time. The wood is added all at once, lit, and burned as quickly and as hotly as possible. Because of the high combustion temperature, there’s virtually no smoke. Combustion is so complete that, with the exception of a bit of smoke released when the fire is first started, most of what comes out of the chimney is carbon dioxide and water vapor.
By Max Lindberg •
May 11, 2008
All it takes is a lot of duct tape, some ducting, PVC pipe, 50 gallon drum, a pile of wood and an old furnace to beat today’s high gas prices.
A man identified only as Bob contributed this story to Coast to Coast, saying the owner told him the wood burning oven catches combustible fuels from wood coals which condenses any moisture. The dried fumes are fed to the engine, and it [...]
Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the first in an eight-part series. The series specifically targets climate found in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has applicability elsewhere.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling amounts to 46% of all energy consumed by our homes. Water heating uses another 14%. In coastal California, where extreme heat is rare and winters are mild, a properly sited, well designed passive solar home can generate its own heat and hot water, and do without air conditioning.
Historically, few homes are so well sited or built. Since our area has more heating days than cooling days, most homeowners need a heating system. What few know is that many indoor air quality problems can be by-products of forced air heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems installed in their homes.
By Philip Proefrock •
February 26, 2007
Photo Credit: Heat-Kit.com
Heating your house with firewood is completely retro. I mean, cutting up trees and burning them, that's just so old fashioned and inefficient, and not green at all.
Right?
What do you mean, wood burning can be green?
In fact, masonry heaters (which are also sometimes called "Finnish heaters" or "Russian heaters") can be a green source for heating a home. While a
[...]
