By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
After being chilled to the core after shoveling snow or chipping ice — just looking out a January window can sometimes be enough to get you frozen through and through — it seems like nothing can bring you back to the land of the temperate like a warm drink in front of the hearth. According to Will Labbe, co-owner of the County Stove Shop, the reason that heating a home with wood is such an effective chill-chaser is because wood produces radiant heat, which means that it warms people and objects directly (as oppose to convection heating, which heats the air around people and objects.)
Labbe also mentioned a variety of benefits that come with heating a home with wood — buying locally grown wood helps the local economy, wood tends to be less expensive that other fuels and newer stoves burn wood with nearly 75 percent efficiency. The benefits of wood fueled heating also extend beyond efficiency and cost-savings.
“If you burn wood, your heat source operates without electricity, it provides light and you can use a woodstove to cook your food,” Labbe said.
While there are certainly benefits to heating with wood, it is by no means a “hands-off” fuel and it takes a bit of attentiveness for responsible woodstove use.
While it seems common sense that the installation of an appliance that burns fuel at 300 degrees would requires more than a glance at the instructions, far too many individuals take an apathetic approach to installation resulting in chimney fires and worse.
“Only certified individuals can install oil, gas or central heating,” Labbe explained. “Anyone can install a wood stove. If you’re installing a woodstove, make sure to read the stove manual and make certain that you have all the required materials — don’t make up your own because you’re creative,” he cautioned.
An example of a common installation hazard, Labbe mentioned that many homes have installed their stoves without a dripless pipe in order to cut costs.
Another incorrect idiom regarding hearth health is the idea of “clean your chimney once a year.”
In a chilly, wet fall like this one when the wood is typically wet and not burning very hot, creosote can cake-up chimney liners in two weeks.
Creosote — a dark, oily residue left inside the chimney after wood has been burned at temperatures too low for complete combustion of the oils in the wood — can build relatively quickly in chimneys and the combustible substance can start a chimney fire well before a scheduled annual cleaning.
For daily chimney maintenance, Labbe suggests burning a hot fire measuring at least 300 degrees every morning to prevent the build-up of creosote (he suggests morning because it’s not a great idea to get your stove piping-hot just before you go to bed). An easy way to get a hot fire going is to burn small pieces of wood — two inches in diameter or less — and stoke the fire frequently. Once a good set of coals have been produced, the stage is set for larger pieces of wood (in his woodstove, Labbe likes to burn maple).
The fire needs to burn at least 300 degrees because creosote is born of lower temperatures — around 200 degrees. The inside of your chimney may not be the easiest thing in the world to look at to check creosote levels, but an inexpensive, magnetic and aesthetically benign temperature gage can tell you how hot the air going up you chimney is in order to help you assess creosote levels.
“How could you tell how fast you’re driving without a speedometer? And how can you tell what the temperature the air in your chimney is without a heat indicator?” Labbe asked. He also suggested that individuals take a second look at products that claim to clean the creosote out of a chimney — many of them are tourist traps.
Labree has co-owned the County Stove Shop for over 40 years; additional questions about the County Stove Shop can be obtained by calling 498-8572.
