About wood

Fireplaces

The easiest and cheapest way to start using wood heating is the purchase of a fireplace. You only need a chimney flue for the air suction. Your house won’t need much restructuring.

Fireplaces generate a pleasant warmth and enrich all rooms. The fire crackles behind the window and sheds a pleasant light. In the room, a fine aromatic natural fragrance can be smelled.

What you should know before planning the purchase a fireplace
Obviously one should start with selecting the best fireplace Taking into account all features of the one you’ve been dreaming of. Would you like it to be just an charming additional heat source or should it be the sole source of your heating at home?

Modern fireplaces generate warm air through a convective flow while heat radiates through the screen, the smoke pipe, and the external surfaces. The combustion chamber has a flat ground with a cast iron grid and an ash case under it. A proper geometry of the combustion chamber, a focused conveyance of the combustion air and efficient post-combustion techniques, assure efficacy and harmlessness. The so-called primary air is conveyed from the bottom through the grid directly beneath the flame while secondary air is fed above the fire. This preheated combustion air serves to draw the sooty particles adherent to the screen back in the combustion chamber. This process helps keeping the screen clean.

If you want to connect your fireplace together with other fire generators to the same chimney, the right model for you is type (A)1 equipped with self-closing doors. These doors must be kept closed even when the fireplace is not in use.

Fireplaces of type 2 have no self-closing doors and cannot work with other heating systems in connection to a single smoke chimney. This system can work either open or closed. A sufficient (mostly external) fresh air inlet must be assured.

Main heating system and additional ones
If you want to use your stove as the sole heating source in your home, continuously burning stoves are the only ones  allowed by law.  

The concept of continuous burning is often misunderstood. There is a difference between continuous burning and non-stop operation. A stove that is suitable for continuous burning can certainly be kept in non-stop operation for hours (even days), but cannot be used as the sole source of heating for the entire residential unit. For this reason continuous burning stoves can be only used as additional heater.

The same applies for intermittent operation stoves. These stoves are strictly allowed for occasional, discontinuous heating and may be used instead of a traditional central heating only over a limited length of time.

continuously burning stoves are designed for higher temperatures than the other types of stoves and may be used as the only heating system for a residential unit providing that they are tested and approved for non-stop heating. This type of stoves can handle different types of fuel from  split logs to brown coal and black coal as well. They normally provide both manual and automatic regulation of combustion air so that it is possible to let them operate  for several hours (also at night) without having to add more fuel . However, the continuously mode cannot be used for burning firewood as wood burning requires consistent air infeed to avoid soot formation. Some renowned companies already offer stoves that are approved for continuous burning applications. 

A particular system is the one of boiler stoves. These stoves have a top tank installed all around the combustion chamber. The fire heats the water that is then conveyed into a storage unit connected to house heating system to provide both warm air and hot water.

Heating performance
When choosing the right stove, you also have to consider its performance. A stove must be right for the type and the size of the room. Mathematical formulas are often tricky, because they only take into account the room size and the insulation whereas the floor plan of the reference room is just as important as its location and the heating requirement of the people who live in.

Ideally, the performance of a stove is indicated by its nominal power normally expressed in kW (e.g. 6 kW). Nominal power specifications are checked and tested during homologation procedures to make sure that trouble-free burning occurs at the stated power. Under practical operating conditions, nominal power can be exceeded without damaging the stove.

If your stove is too big for your place or too much wood is used, you will soon create an unpleasantly warm environment. At the same time, if you use insufficient wood for the capacity of the stove, the room will soon cool, the screen will get dark, the heating power and the efficiency will strongly decrease.

Certain types of stoves are designed to handle a half load for a half performance in order to comply with emissions regulations. In this case the nominal power is indicated as a range (e.g. 4-8 kW) where the nominal heating power corresponds to the highest indicated value (in this case 8 kW).

Tip: before purchasing, clarify all the above points and if necessary, ask an expert for further technical details!