The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy by Dan Chiras

Author:Dan Chiras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TEC031010
ISBN: 9781550924794
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2011-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

Another benefit of wood stoves is that they’re fueled by a renewable resource. If sustainably managed, wood lots can provide a lifetime of fuel to a family without damaging the environment. (To learn ways to harvest safely and sustainably, you may want to read The Good Woodcutter’s Guide by Dave Johnson.)

Harvesting woodlots can even benefit forests. For example, thinning woodlots reduces crowding and competition among trees for limited water supplies. Trees that are less crowded are healthier and better able to resist insects and other pests.

Wood burning is also economical. A cord of wood yields the same amount of useable heat as 200 gallons of heating oil, a ton of hard coal, or about 4,000 kilowatts of electricity. A cord of wood costs about $150, depending on your location and the type of wood. With home heating oil running around $2.80–$3.00 a gallon at this writing, 200 gallons of heating oil would cost about $560–$600. At 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, 4,000 kilowatts of electricity would cost $320–$400.

Wood burning does have some downsides. First and foremost, heating with wood may require a lot of work, especially if you are cutting from your own woodlot. You’ll have to fell dead trees, trim off limbs, cut up the wood, haul it to the house, split it, and stack it. Even if you purchase unsplit logs that are delivered to your home, you’ll be spending a lot of time cutting and splitting firewood. And don’t forget, you’ll be hauling wood into the house on cold winter nights, lighting fires, and tending to them. You’ll be cleaning up bark and debris that inevitably drop on your floor and cleaning the ashes out of the wood stove every week or so, and then disposing of them. (Cooled ashes can be spread on your property to return inorganic nutrients to the soil.)

Although hard work is good for the body, and many people enjoy it, especially if it helps increase self-reliance, wood heat is more than many people want to deal with. You may want to consider purchasing firewood. Many companies deliver it to your home and some will even stack it for you — for a price, of course. Or you may want to consider a pellet stove, discussed shortly.

But those are not the only downsides of wood burning you should be aware of before you set off on this venture. As environmentally benign as wood is, it can cause indoor air pollution. As noted earlier, smoke may escape from a wood stove as a result of backdraft. Smoke may also escape when a stove is improperly opened, or from leaks, and can result in unhealthy indoor air. In recent field tests of Canadian homes, varying degrees of combustion spillage from assorted furnaces, fireplaces, and wood stoves were detected in an alarming percentage of the homes tested. Soot deposits on walls, ceilings, and drapes are not only a nuisance, they are a sign that the air is polluted with potentially harmful particulates. Wood stoves, even clean-burning models, contribute to ambient air pollution.

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