I am looking for an efficient woodburning stove for my lounge. I have
come across industrial looking wood burning boilers that gasify the
wood in a top chamber with the flames created underneath in a second
chamber.

Is anybody aware of a high-tech design of cosmetically acceptable wood
stove that perhaps burns the wood in such a way as to increase
efficiency and reduce waste product?

Ideally I would like it to be thermostatically controlled.

Top of the range stoves (rather than woodburners) are Jotul and Morso.
Jotul claim that their stoves are able to burn methanes in the flue gas
particularly efficently - and that the effect is to release less
greenhouse gases than if the wood was left to rot. A friend showed me a
scheme the French governent was running to subsidise this type of stove
because of it's green credentials.

There is one brand of stoves from the US that uses a catalyst (can't
remember the name), but more than one person has told me they're
problematic.

I've got a Jotul F600 and recommend it - though with hindsight I would
have paid a little extra for the enamel finish.

Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my
fireplace
http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx

It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of
information on wood burner efficiencies:
http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm

Plus pellet burners, they work like this:
http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php

Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what
I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the
the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice! I
have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself.
If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner.

The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where
the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works
but their site is here fopr interest:
http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp

Tim wrote:
Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my
fireplace
http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx

It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of
information on wood burner efficiencies:
http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm

Plus pellet burners, they work like this:
http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php

Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what
I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the
the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice! I
have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself.
If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner.

The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where
the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works
but their site is here fopr interest:
http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp

hi Tim,
I am a great advocate of the wood burning stove and have one in my
living room.
A few points to observe.
Forget about thermostats etc. Its impossible to be so precise as the
heat output is dictated entirely by the amount of wood and the quality
of the wood you burn. Obviously well seasoned timber will burn better
than fresh timber which will leave much more ash behind. Ash logs will
burn quicker than most others etc etc. Apple trees will give off a
lovely aroma. Alder wood is almost impossible to burn. Oak is difficult
also. You may have lots of dead elms which are great firewood. So you
cant control these with instruments eventhough some will bull**** you
that they can.
If you mix the different types of wood they will burn much better.
Also once you get a fire going, put a big log on and it will burn for
many hours.
At bedtime select a large log and close the doors and damper and in the
morning you will come down to a warm room and a small fire still going
on the bed of hot ash.
Naturally it all depends on the weather how much heat you want and how
large your room is.
It is also dictated by how much you close the doors and open or close
the damper.
To start a fire, leave one door open a little and this produces a great
draught to get it started.
Once the fire gets going leave both doors open fully and its like
sitting at an open fire.
If it smokes, close one or both doors enough to cure it.
We clean out the ashes about every three or four weeks.
Burn the fire on the floor of the stove on a bed of ash rather than on
a metal grid.

The most important thing to realise about that stove you showed in the
pic is that it is free standing and not set into a fireplace. That
maximises the heat output in the room.
If you set it into the fireplace, you will lose a great deal of heat
straight up the chimney.
Put a sheet of metal in front of the opening, just set back from the
edge and make a hole in the tin to run the flue horizontally into that
sheet, thereby ensuring your burner is actually sitting in the room
rather than in the fireplace. This keeps all the heat in the room.

There is a metal plate in mine just in front of the flue and this
deflects the heat outwards and the fumes drift over it to the flue.

Best buy I ever made.
It made my home livable because before that during the winter I had to
retire to a smaller room because of the cold.
Every home should have a wood burning stove, especially if you have a
really large room.
Its clean, its natural, its green, its cheap, its independant of oil or
gas which may someday be turned off and its basically a brick lined
metal box with two doors and a hole for the flue.
the one you show is probably expensive because it is elaborate in
design.

The message . com
from contains these words:

Its clean, its natural, its green, its cheap,

While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out
quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals,
compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:

While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out
quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals,
compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Some American states are likely to bring in pollution laws specifically
to control wood burners. They chuck out huge amounts of pollution, are
hugely inefficient and there's been a big increase in their use because
of oil price rises. Lots of people have them , but formerly relied on
oil when they realised the amount of work involved in feeding them.
Bookmarked this recently;
http://www.fbcgroup.co.uk/

While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out
quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals,
compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice.

http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm

Can I burn wood in a smokeless zone?

Wood can be burned in a smokeless zone if the appliance (i.e. the
stove or boiler) has an Exemption Certificate. Companies which
manufacture stoves with Exemption Certificates include Clearview,
Vermont Castings, Dovre, Dunsley Yorkshire Stoves, Morso and Jotul.

A full list can be found at
http://www.uksmokecontrolareas.co.uk....php?country=e.

Guy King wrote:
The message . com
from contains these words:

Its clean, its natural, its green, its cheap,

While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out
quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals,
compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice.

Yes, but they don't put out CO2 that hasn't already been taken out of
the air..recently.

Otherwise, I totally agree.

However I LIKE the smell.

On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote:

Alder wood is almost impossible to burn.

Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the
occult (allegedly), it does however burn well.

Oak is difficult also.

Bull****.

Steve Firth wrote:
On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote:

Alder wood is almost impossible to burn.

Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the
occult (allegedly), it does however burn well.

Must try some. We could do with a few local spirits to liven up the dull
winters.

Oak is difficult also.

Bull****.

Both burn well if dry.

Never burn MDF if you can help it though..never mind te occult..it
stinks and is probably laced with a cocktail of chemicals that Saddam
Hussein would have wet dreams over.

Steve Firth wrote:
On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote:

Alder wood is almost impossible to burn.

Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the
occult (allegedly), it does however burn well.

It could be that there is a confusion between Elder and Alder, totally
different trees. Elder (usually only a small bush, biggest logs
you'll get are only three or four inches diameter) really doesn't burn
very well.


Oak is difficult also.

Bull****.

It needs a good hot fire to burn well but that's all.

--
Chris Green

Tim wrote:
Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my
fireplace
http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx

It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of
information on wood burner efficiencies:
http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm

Plus pellet burners, they work like this:
http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php

Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what
I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the
the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice!

It's also ********..to generate any sort of heat is about a cubic meter
of ash a month, in my experience.


I
have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself.
If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner.


Not a lot wrong with that - we use a couple of open fires and a
'highwayman' stove here..only one open fire is used consistently though.

The highwayman is definitely less draught inducing and more efficient
than the open fire..we have it in our bedroom for days when we have the
'flu...its brilliant.

A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up
to about 2-3. Our huge open fire is about 10KW, but a lot goes up the
chimney..it takes ages to warm the room as mostly the first three hours
its warming the brickwork around it. However it keeps the room hot all
night afterwards. We tend to light it about 2pm in the winter, so that
by 5pm its really well set up. It dies around 11pm which is a couple of
hours before we hit the sack.



The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where
the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works
but their site is here fopr interest:
http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

It's also ********..to generate any sort of heat is about a cubic meter
of ash a month, in my experience.

There is something seriously flawed with your stove or more likely
the way you use it.
Mine has a plastic shopping bag full of ash which will have become
almost rigid and that is about once a month with a fire on day and
night.
Perhaps you are burning fresh timber or more likely you have a grate.
Its best to burn the fire on the floor of the stove with no grate. That
way you always have a hot bed of ash under it.



A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up
to about 2-3. Our huge open fire is about 10KW, but a lot goes up the
chimney..it takes ages to warm the room as mostly the first three hours
its warming the brickwork around it. However it keeps the room hot all
night afterwards. We tend to light it about 2pm in the winter, so that
by 5pm its really well set up. It dies around 11pm which is a couple of
hours before we hit the sack.



you use the traditional fireplace for your living room so perhaps you
should not talk so knowledgably about wood burning stoves when you
clearly have limited experience of them.
That scenario would be much improved if you installed a wood burning
stove in your living room. You could get 10 kw and lose very little up
the chimney if you did what I said earlier.
You would probably burn much less timber in the stove and get far
better heat output and therefore put less of those pollutants you refer
to into the atmosphere.
You dont know what you are missing.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up
to about 2-3.

Our good woodburner kicks out about 8KW according to the specs. It's
Stovax unit, and although it's relatively new to us (and therefore we
haven't use it that much - it's still summertime in Devon ;-) when we
have run it up, we've been more than impressed with it.

http://www.stovax.com/products.htm?cid=4&sid=9&pid=216

Gordon

Top of the range stoves (rather than woodburners) are Jotul and Morso.

I have looked at those ranges. Does anybody else have any other
suggestions forparticularly efficient woodburning stoves that I
should be exploring?

Tim wrote:
Top of the range stoves (rather than woodburners) are Jotul and Morso.

I have looked at those ranges. Does anybody else have any other
suggestions forparticularly efficient woodburning stoves that I
should be exploring?

Dunno. But fan blown furnaces fed on sawdust and chippings are supposed
to be ultra low pollution.

The more oxcygen you get in the less carbon monoxide, and the higher the
combustion temp, and the greater chance of breaking all organics down
into simple stuff like H20, CO2 and SOx. And possibly NOx. AFAICR thats
pretty much what wood is made from by and large..the trace stuff tends
to stay in the ash.

The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

The more oxcygen you get in the less carbon monoxide, and the higher the
combustion temp, and the greater chance of breaking all organics down
into simple stuff like H20, CO2 and SOx. And possibly NOx.

No, generally NOx level rise as combustion temperature rises and free
oxygen in the flame increases. This is why diesels have exhaust gas
recirculation - to reduce the amount of available oxygen when there
isn't a full fuel charge.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:
The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

The more oxcygen you get in the less carbon monoxide, and the higher the
combustion temp, and the greater chance of breaking all organics down
into simple stuff like H20, CO2 and SOx. And possibly NOx.

No, generally NOx level rise as combustion temperature rises and free
oxygen in the flame increases. This is why diesels have exhaust gas
recirculation - to reduce the amount of available oxygen when there
isn't a full fuel charge.

I had a notion of that - which is why I said 'possibly' NOx...thanks for
clearing that one up.