Go Green: Heating options for cottages

By Susan Nerberg

There’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

• Heating Systems & Accessories
• Infrared Heating

Burning

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

• Natural Resources Canada's web pages for A Guide to Residential Wood Heating www.canren.gc.ca
• U.S. Dept. of Energy website at www.eere.energy.gov
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site has a useful page on cleaner woodburning stoves and fireplaces: www.epa.gov/woodstoves/

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

• StoveMaster (sells masonry stoves and more, throughout Canada) www.stovemaster.com
• Vermont Woodstoves (factory in Vermont, sells a variety of soapstone masonry heaters) www.vermontwoodstove.com/msnyhtrs.htm
• Soapstone Heating (sells the high-end Finnish brand Tulikivi; with dealers in some parts of Canada) www.soapstoneheating.com

Pellet stoves and fuel

• See Wittus and Northwest Stoves above
• Bixby Energy www.bixbyenergy.com
• EcoBrics, pellets made from compressed saw dust (click on the United Kingdom flag for an English version of the site) www.naturbrennstoffe.de/

Wood fireplace inserts

• Vermont Castings www.vermontcastings.com
• Fireplaces Now (offers gas, wood and pellet inserts for existing fireplaces or new construction): www.fireplacesnow.com

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

Geothermal

• The Earth Energy Society of Canada's comprehensive site explains the technology, outlines potential savings, and provides a directory of installers in Canada, by province (and a list of questions you should ask them about the contractors and system manufacturers) www.earthenergy.ca/conta.html
• An information hub for all kinds of alternative heating systems, including a good description of geothermal heating www.alternative-heating.com/geothermal-heating-systems.html
• The Natural Resources Canada site has a page that indicates potential savings from geothermal, or earth energy, systems www.canren.gc.ca/tech_appl/index.asp?CaId=3&PgID=337

- 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.