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Go Green: Heating options for cottages

woodstove adding a logThere’s nothing like an open fireplace for ambience. But if you want to keep toasty this winter, look elsewhere: A fireplace allows about 90 per cent of the heat to escape through the chimney. For greener heating, choose high-efficiency alternatives that use renewable fuels.

Pellet stoves

Pellet stoves burn peanut-sized nuggets made from waste products such as wood chips, sawdust, and nutshells. They produce less nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide than traditional woodstoves, and their com-bustion efficiency hovers around 80 per cent (compare that to 10 per cent for a fireplace). High-efficiency woodstoves and new masonry stoves provide a hotter, cleaner burn than their older counterparts. Made with soapstone, brick, slate, or clay, masonry heaters absorb the heat from the wood burned and radiate it into the room over several hours. These large stoves often come with optional inserts for heating water, cooking, or baking. Or you can retrofit your existing open fireplace with an insert, creating a much more efficient closed system, usually with a fan that blows the heat into the room.

Geothermal Heating

Geothermal heating uses the difference in temper-ature below and above ground to keep a cottage comfy. In winter, the temperature just a few metres beneath the earth’s surface is warmer than the air. A typ-ical system uses closed, liquid-filled loops drilled into the earth, or immersed in a nearby lake, to absorb warmth. A heat-pump unit transfers the heat inside using a standard system such as air ducts or in-floor heating pipes. It works in reverse in summer, keeping the cottage comfortable when the air is hot and the earth cool.

Go green links

Cottage Life's Products & Services Directory
Burning

For more information on efficiency of wood and pellet stoves versus fireplaces and other heating sources visit 

Manufacturers

High-efficiency wood stoves

  • Rais (has dealers in Canada, including Ontario) www.rais.com
  • Wittus (a selection of European wood-burning stoves and more; has dealers throughout Canada) www.wittus.com
  • Northwest Stoves (B.C.-based; dealers in different parts of Canada) www.northweststoves.ca
  • Regency (sells Regency, Hampton and Excalibur wood, pellet and gas stoves and fireplace inserts; dealers across Canada) www.regency-fire.com

Masonry heaters

Pellet stoves and fuel

Wood fireplace inserts

Note: most manufacturers of wood stoves and fireplaces will also sell fireplace inserts

Geothermal

- Susan Nerberg

 

 

 

Published in the October 2008 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2008 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.