The Wood Stove Accessories Blog

Over a period of the last ten years there has been an explosion of technology in wood burning appliances and wood burning accessories to go with those appliances.  There are new wood burning stoves and pellet burning stoves.  There are new wood burning fireplace inserts and new fireplaces built to be energy efficient.  Along with all of these new appliances there are wood burning accessories to go along with them.

Lots of Wood Burning Accessories

For wood burning stoves the list of wood burning accessories is a long one.  There are circulating fans which can be used to move the warm area from the wood burning stove through out the rest of the room.  There are even fans designed to move the heat from one room to another and some fans that will move the heat through the ducts in a home so that the heat can be more evenly spread throughout the entire home.

There are also wood burning accessories that are meant to sit on the stove and be used, such as kettles and steamers.  Kettles are designed to be used as any normal kettle would – to heat water for tea or other uses.  Steamers are also used to heat water but these wood burning accessories heat the water so that it will humidify the air around the stove.  Often burning wood will dry out the air surrounding the stove so a steamer helps put the humidity back into the air and make it more comfortable to be in the room.

There are also other wood burning accessories such as pipe shams which are designed to decorate the stove pipe, pipe thermometers which allow you to keep track of the heat going into the stove pipe and hearth pads that sit under the stove and insulate the floor so that it does not get to hot.

Pellet stoves are a little different from wood stoves but most of the same wood burning accessories are used with pellet stoves as are used with wood stoves.  In addition there are some accessories that are specifically designed for pellet stoves.  Pellet buckets are one of the handiest wood burning accessories on the list since they allow you to easily handle the pellets when loading them into the stove and they also provide a decorative touch as well. 

Remote control thermostats are another of the wood burning accessories that are used with pellet stoves because pellet stoves typically have built in thermostats and it is handy to be able to control the thermostats from across the room. 

Other handy wood burning accessories include stove screens and fireplace screens used to create a protective barrier and cleaning accessories such as stove pipe brushes and fireplace tools.  All in all there the list continues to grow when it comes to wood burning accessories.

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Wood pellets, the fuel for pellet stoves is made of highly compressed sawdust. This sawdust is mostly recovered from industries such as lumber and furniture manufacturers, and must be free from glues or additives. This recycling process diverts tons of waste from landfills across the country each year.

Wood pellets are a renewable resource that has lower carbon emissions than regular wood and does not have to be imported from the Middle East. Increasing the number of pellet stoves in locations where it makes sense would help reduce the amount of fossil fuel being burned.  Heating with wood pellets also provides an emergency heat source when their is a power outage.

Wood pellets are more convenient to use than chopping your own wood and provide a more efficient source of heat.  Granted, in an area where wood is easily accessible and free, burning wood will likely be the more economical choice.  But if your choice is between paying for chopped wood or paying for pellets, buying a pellet stove would likely be the way to go.

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As heating fuel prices have soared, more and more people have been taking a look at wood pellet stoves to reduce their utility costs.

Pellets that fuel these stoves are made from wood scraps ground into pellets to form a smooth burning fuel. They are a cheaper way to heat, but they are a bit less convenient than just turning up the thermostat.

The wood pellets typically come in 40-50 pound bags. And every day, sometimes twice a day depending on usage, you have to reload the stove.

But according to Peter Howe of NECN, Jon Strimling had a better idea: Flick a switch to have a hopper load the stove. Then get a guy with a truck to load the hopper for you.

“We’re taking pellets in bulk out of the back of this truck, by bulk I mean there’s no bags in them, and we’re flowing them down this pipe into the garage” says Strimling.

Two fills like this a year should be enough to heat a home.  That’s three to four tons of product that the homeowner doesn’t have to move.

Strimling’s company now charges about three hundred and twenty five dollars a ton, delivered, for pellets on pallets. In heating value, 30 to 40 percent less expensive than heating oil. They’ve just started selling hopper systems they hope will make pellets even more popular.

Not only is bulk delivery of the pellets less hassle than pellets in a bag, it costs about 10 percent less too.  There’s actually ten to fifteen percent of the product cost tied up the packaging.

Despite the hands-on requirements of wood pellet heating, it’s popularity has grown quickly in recent years. Over 800,000 homes in the U.S. use pellets for some or all of their heat, burning 2.2 billion pounds annualy. The industry has grown to 80 pellet makers and 23 manufacturers of fireplace inserts, stoves, and furnaces.

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Colorado’s problem with Pine Beetles devastation of lodge pole pines finds a silver lining in wood pellet production.  Pellet mills are making pellets from the lodge pole pines killed by the pine beetle infestation.

This creates two benefits for the area.  By cleaning up the dead trees and turning them into wood pellets, mills are able to bring very low-cost fuel to homeowners, and reduce the risk of deadly forest fires throughout the region at the same time. This is a win-win situation.

Local companies and groups are also creating initiatives to plant indigenous trees in non-harvest locations throughout Colorado as a method of replenishing forests devastated by the mountain pine beetle.  It is estimated that all of Colorado’s mature lodgepole forests will be
destroyed by the beetles within five years.

At $299/ton the cost of these wood pellets is still equivalent to fuel oil at below $2.50/gallon. A far cry from what consumers are seeing in their heating oil bills.

Technorati Tags: Pellet Stove Accessories, wood pellets

Colorado’s problem with Pine Beetles devastation of lodge pole pines finds a silver lining in wood pellet production.  Pellet mills are making pellets from the lodge pole pines killed by the pine beetle infestation.

This creates two benefits for the area.  By cleaning up the dead trees and turning them into wood pellets, mills are able to bring very low-cost fuel to homeowners, and reduce the risk of deadly forest fires throughout the region at the same time. This is a win-win situation.

Local companies and groups are also creating initiatives to plant indigenous trees in non-harvest locations throughout Colorado as a method of replenishing forests devastated by the mountain pine beetle.  It is estimated that all of Colorado’s mature lodgepole forests will be
destroyed by the beetles within five years.

At $299/ton the cost of these wood pellets is still equivalent to fuel oil at below $2.50/gallon. A far cry from what consumers are seeing in their heating oil bills.

Technorati Tags: Pellet Stove Accessories, wood pellets