Choosing a Wood Burning Stove 27 Feb 09
This is part two of our wood burning stove installation saga. In part one we looked at Why Choose a Wood Burning Stove? and now we turn to the question of how to choose your stove from the seemingly endless options out there.
There are two major factors that will influence your choice of stove. One is the type of stove, of which style/appearance is a small component, but its probably best to start with the other major factor, heat output.
The heat output of a stove is measured in Kilowatt Hours (kwh) and if you want to know what those are you can check Wikipedia, but really you don’t need to know. All that’s important is finding out what output is appropriate for the room that your stove will be in. Pick a stove with too low an output and it will be hard to heat your room. Too high an output and your room may get uncomfortably hot. Thankfully there are several online tools to help you, of which this is just one example. Simply plug in the dimensions of your room and the tool will let you know what heat output you’ll need from your stove.
Choosing the type of stove you want may not be so easy, simply because there are so many different choices out there. Sometimes your requirements/situation may dictate the stove type you need. Otherwise, the only limiting factors are your budget and your patience to search through all the options.
In our case, we started out looking at ‘inset’ stoves, which as their name suggests are inset into the chimney breast so that only the front of the stove is visible. The effect is almost like having a flat screen TV that only shows the ‘flames channel’ and gives out heat too. However, our search took a twist when we found out that inset stoves are a) not quite as good at heating as other stove types, b) would still require a big fireguard to keep Ben away from them & a hearth just in case any burning wood should fall out when the door was opened and finally c) are generally more expensive than their freestanding siblings.
All of this good information came to us via the Wood Energy forum on the New House Farm website (formly known as the “It’s Not Easy Being Green” site). I would heartily recommend that anyone thinking about installing a wood burning stove should join this forum as its full of invaluable advice and many individuals who are very knowledgeable on the topic, from long-time stove users to professional stove installers.
Knowing that we required a stove with around 4Kwh heat output, the good folks of the Wood Energy forum suggested that we check out the Charnwood Country 4, Charnwood Cove 1 and Stovax Stockton 4 stoves, with all of these three being recommended as reliable, easy-to-use stoves that are good value for money. Handily, a local stove supplier (Mourne Fireplaces) stocks both the Charnwood & Stovax brands and having seen them in the ‘flesh’, we opted for the Charnwood Cove 1, with the optional store stand, based on appearance as much as anything else. Though we didn’t pick the Stockton 4, its fairly obvious that its catalog picture was a source of inspiration for our own stove install.
So our stove was picked and a deposit paid, now to get the living room ready for the stove’s installation. Our saga is only just beginning…
Posted by Nev in Going Green with tags charnwood, eco-friendly, heat output, new house farm, stovax, wood burning stove, wood energy
