Different Stokes 

by Ray Ford

Not your grandpa’s pot belly, the new woodstoves are sleeker, cleaner, and more efficient.

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that a cottager possessed of electric baseboard heating (and therefore, a rapidly diminishing fortune), must be in want of a woodstove. After all, when a bush cord of good hardwood packs the same juice as 8,500 kilowatt hours of hydro – at about half the cost – who wouldn’t want to burn less cash?

Yet ever since the first hunter-gatherers opted to kick back around a blaze by the lake, the draw of wood smoke and the allure of flame has gone beyond mere economics. Wood heat is hot – shipments of what the industry calls “cordwood hearth appliances” rose by 14 per cent between 1999 and 2004. Unlike their gas-fired competitors, woodstoves combine ambience and authenticity.

“Look at it this way,” says Tiverton, Ont., certified chimney sweep and stove seller Marshall Byle. “You’ve just driven two hours out of the city to get away from all the artificiality. You drive all that way with your children or grandchildren to have them flip a switch on a gas stove? No, part of the whole experience is chopping the kindling and building the fire.”

John Barr felt that call of the hearth after visiting the electrically heated cottage of his partner, Mary Kelly, on Upper Rideau Lake, near Westport, Ont. “I thought a woodstove would complete the place, and make it more enjoyable for everybody,” he says.

When it comes to finding the right stove, however, neophytes such as Barr have a bush cord’s worth of decisions to make regarding safe- and clean-burning technology, stove size and location, and aesthetics. As Barr says, today’s woodstoves rekindle memories of family gatherings around blazing fireplaces or radiant Franklins, but they are vastly different from their pot-bellied ancestors.

Cleanup time Grandpa’s stovebelched crud like a stale cigar, but today’s “EPA” stoves – certified to meet clean-burning standards such as the Canadian Standards Association’s CSA B415 or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s EPA Phase II – chop emissions by up to 90 per cent and produce the same amount of heat with as much as 30 per cent less wood.

And there’s more good news. The new generation of certified stoves offers a more complete combustion, producing more heat with less smoke and creosote – the tarry, crusty deposit that plugs chimneys and fuels chimney fires.

Clean-burning technology first showed up in the catalytic stove. Borrowing from the automotive industry, the approach forces flue gases through a red-hot ceramic catalytic combustor that eats smoke the way kids at a campfire inhale s’mores. But try burning glossy paper – or a foil wrapper from the chocolate used for s’mores – and the combustor suffers a fatal case of indigestion. “Somebody can screw up a combustor in a weekend, and then you’re on the hook for a part that costs $250 to $300, and the labour to change it,” says Frank Shillolo, of Original Heat, a woodstove retailer in Burks Falls, Ont.

Nowadays “cat” stoves are about as common as diesel cars – they’re available, and some folks love them. But most opt for the successor technology, the “advanced combustion,” or non-catalytic, stove. The non-cat relies on a sophisticated firebox and complex air flow to achieve a more complete combustion. There are no combustors to maintain or replace, and no special lighting instructions. “Personally, I think non-cats are the safer, better technology, offering better performance over the long term,” says Skip Hayden, senior research scientist at Natural Resources Canada’s Integrated Energy Systems Laboratory in Ottawa.

Non-cats are a good choice for a cottage where visitors are apt to use the stove because (and this is no slight to your friends and relatives) they’re almost idiot-proof to operate. 

The advanced-combustion approach is also a homegrown Canadian technology. In a country where the national symbols include a hardwood leaf and a rodent with a taste for wood, perhaps it’s no surprise that Canadians are leaders in wood-heat know-how. “We have a significant number of world-leading woodstove manufacturers both in terms of the quality of the product and design,” says Hayden, listing Napoleon, Regency, Osburn, Pacific Energy, RSF, and Drolet among the major players.

Fire placing 

When it comes to inviting a new stove into your cottage, size and location go together like kindling and newspaper – you need the right proportion of both to get a good flame. When the combination isn’t quite right, the result is the kind of unhappy experience that befell the Leprechaun in Frank Shillolo’s shop.

The Leprechaun is a lovely little porcelain-enamel stove made by the Irish company Waterford Stanley. The wood-burning sprite was placed in a room with a vaulted ceiling and, try though it might, it only heated the upstairs rather than the room in which it was placed. “It was the classic case of do-it-yourself, and it was the incorrect size,” says Shillolo. Equally troublesome, the stove burned 14" logs in an area where 16" firewood is the standard size for sale. Filling the firebox became an exercise in frustration. The mischievous Leprechaun was traded for a larger stove.

Moral of the story: Don’t spend a pot of gold for a new stove until you’re sure it’s the right size for the cottage. An undersized stove “is like a little car pulling a trailer,” says Byle. “It can’t handle the job, and sooner or later it’s going to break down.” On the other hand, an oversized stove will turn the cottage into a sauna.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that controlling heat output is the big problem,” says Killaloe, Ont.-based wood heat consultant John Gulland. “We size woodstoves for the coldest weather, but the vast majority of our heating is not during the coldest weather.” The result is a Goldilocks world of wood heat: The stove’s usually either too cold or too warm, and it’s hard to get it just right.

Trouble is, there’s no quick rule of thumb for selecting the right-sized stove. Manufacturers list heating output in BTUs and square footage, but real-life heating ability also depends on the species and amount of wood, size and layout of the cottage, “tightness” of the structure, and prevailing climate.

There are a lot of variables to sort through. Maple produces more heat than poplar. A new, well-insulated cottage will be easier to heat than a drafty old one, but the outside climate – is the cottage on temperate Pelee Island or cold Lake Temagami? – also affects the demand for heat. Woodstoves are more effective in cottages with open floor plans, and less effective in a layout with many small rooms.

Starting to sweat? Gulland’s advice is to relax. “For all practical purposes, there are really only three sizes of stoves: small, med-ium, and large,” he says. “For almost all cottages, small or medium will do the job.”

While stoves, unlike long johns, don’t come labelled S, M, or L, small stoves are typically rated to heat 600–1,200 sq. ft. and radiate up to 50,000 BTUs. Expect them to warm a chilly, drafty room or provide heat for a small three-season cottage. “They’re for people who really don’t want to heat that much, but they do want a small, cosy fire,” Gulland says.

With their larger firebox capacity, mid-sized stoves (rated for 1,000–2,000 sq. ft. and up to 70,000 BTUs) are cottage heat workhorses. Big enough to provide winter heat and flexible enough to produce a quick fire on a chilly spring evening, mediums are the choice of most cottagers. “If you arrive at the cottage in late September or early October and you try to get a small stove to heat the place up, it might take eight hours,” says Gulland. “But a medium will do the job fairly quickly.”

The big burners (for up to 3,000 sq. ft., 80,000 BTUs) may be suitable for cottages with a cathedral ceiling, a large, open floor plan with lots of volume, and extensive winter usage. But for most cottagers, they’re wood-heat overkill.

One temptation is to supersize your order because it doesn’t cost much more. For example, the same Pacific Energy steel unit with a gold-trimmed, cast-iron door and an ash pan costs $1,350 for a small, $1,560 for a medium, and about $2,000 for a large. But the best buy is the stove that fits your cottage. “A common mistake is to think ‘I only have to pay $100 more, so let’s get the bigger one,’” says Hayden, who argues that even a small stove is adequate for most cottages.

Be sure you insure No matter what its size, there’s no option but to ensure the stove is safe – and that your insurance company agrees. A chat with your insurer may sound as appealing as thin socks in January, but it could make the difference between buying a stove your policy will cover, and being stuck with a chunk of metal the company won’t touch with a 10-figure premium. “If you’re shopping for a stove or buying a cottage that’s already got a stove in it, it’s better to call your insurer first and ask questions,” says Todd Minor, a broker with Welland-based Mason Insurance Brokers. Tell the insurer the model and age of the stove plus any other information on the manufacturer’s plate on the back of the stove – particularly whether the stove has been certified as a safe-burning appliance by CSA, ULC, or Warnock Hersey. Mention anything you know about the installation, and ask what changes, if any, the insurer will require in order to cover the cottage

“We’ve declined cottages with older woodstoves that weren’t certified. We tell people, ‘Look, you’re not even sure about this unit, so we’d rather not quote on it,’” Minor says. “The most important thing is the safety approval. If the stove’s not approved, most insurance companies will make you remove it.”

Minor says many insurers will also ask cottagers to fill out a questionnaire on the stove installation, listing details such as clearances from walls, the size of the hearth pad, and particulars of the heat shield, if you have one, and then check the figures against the ones required by the stove manufacturer. (Cottagers can conduct their own check by looking up the detailed installation instructions posted on most stove company websites.)

Designer details 

Stoves used to be like Model Ts: You could have any colour you wanted as long as it was black. Black stoves are still popular, but today’s manufacturers offer enough variety in colours, trim, and raw materials to compete with anything on a car lot.

The choices start with the innards of the stove. While cast iron is the traditional choice, steel has dominated the market since the ’70s. Cheaper than cast-iron, steel stoves employ a box-within-a-box construction, with air circulating in the gap between the two boxes. This results in more convective heat, less radiant heat, and tighter clearances, so it can be installed closer to walls or in a corner.

In contrast, the body of a cast-iron stove is a single solid layer of iron. It produces more radiant heat and requires greater clearances for safe installation. “A steel stove might have a minimum clearance of five and a half inches off the back wall, while some cast-iron stoves require 14,” says Marty Staz of The Country Stove, a retailer in Port Carling. Keep in mind that clearance is a function of design; a cast-iron stove with two heat shields can have a clearance of as little as two inches. And while ornately crafted cast iron has that classic appeal, these stoves can cost twice as much as equivalent steel units.

Today’s well-dressed steel and cast-iron stoves come with nickel or 24-karat gold-plate accents. (Unlike brass, gold doesn’t discolour when exposed to firebox heat.) Exterior treatments include brushed nickel for a striking high-tech look and porcelain or vitreous enamel finishes in black, green, blue, ivory, mocha, and a deep, dark red.

“Enamel stoves are nice from the aesthetic point of view, because the stove becomes a piece of furniture,” says David Riley, Ontario sales manager for Fireplace Products International, makers of Regency and Hampton woodstoves. Enamels also resist rust, so they’re a good choice for humid cottages.

Other features offered by some manufacturers are built-in ash pans, cooking surfaces or trivets for heating a kettle or stockpot, a blower to better distribute convection heat, legs or a pedestal stand, and front, top, and side firebox doors. Aside from some utility-type models or cookstoves, almost all stoves now come with ceramic viewing windows.

Mistakes can happen when cottagers fall in love with a stove at first sight. Gulland recommends putting as much effort into buying a stove as you would into choosing a car. (After all, you’ll likely own the stove longer.) Because different shops carry different lines of stoves, he suggestsvisiting at least three to look at operating stoves and talking to dealers who heat with wood. “It’s a process of educating yourself. By the time you visit the third dealer, you’ve got a good idea what you’re after.”

When you finally do make a selection, most local dealers will confirm your judgement with a site visit. “Sometimes I talk to a cottager here for half an hour or an hour, but then when I go to the site I find the stove they want is not appropriate,” says Shillolo. “It’s really important to see the cottage, and help the cottager decide what will work there.”

Back at Mary Kelly’s cottage, the clan is ready for the inaugural fire in a new, EPA-certified, mid-sized, advanced-combustion steel stove with an oval gold-trimmed door. The stove presides in what John Barr calls the “cathedral” room – the cottage’s main living space with its vaulted ceiling – surrounded by comfy furniture and beneath a straight metal stack. Kelly hopes the new blower-equipped stove will sharply reduce the need for electric heat, and make the cottage a more convivial spot for cold-weather fun. “We’ve been talking about doing this for such a long time,” she says. “I can see spending more time here in the fall and at Christmas. It’s going to be pleasant to have a fire.”

In these days of high energy costs and cleaner-burning, safer woodstoves filled with dramatic, roiling flames, the benefits of wood heat are as obvious as the Milky Way on a dark night. And on nights when it’s too cold to observe the heavens, cottagers can stay inside and flame-gaze instead. Whoever whiled away the hours contemplating an electric baseboard heater?

Writer Ray Ford has fond childhood memories of a Findlay Oval cookstove.

A case of the flue

A straight interior metal chimney offers the most efficient escape route for hot flue gases. The vigorous flow of gases spawns an updraft that feeds the fire by pulling combustion air into the firebox. Straight stacks also warm quickly and stay hot, so they’re less likely to collect creosote. And – bonus – they’re the most economical to install.

Roll call: adding up the extras

The stove is the star of your wood heat system, a congenial raconteur who exudes warmth and bonhomie on snowy nights. But like so many entertainers, it’s also a glutton for attention. It’s easy to forget the stove can only spin its incendiary tales with the help of a less-voluble cast of characters, from the hearth pad at the bottom to the chimney cap at the top. To give the bit players their due, here’s a rundown of the wood heat components you’ll need to hear the crackle of the flames on a winter night.

Insulated steel stack

Includes a square support – the black box that joins the stove pipe to the stack through the attic and roof, while maintaining a 5-cm clearance from the rafters. Budget: about $650 for a 1.8-metre run through the attic to the roof, including chimney cap, hardware, and flashing.

Double-walled Stovepipe

Recommended for inside use, up to the ceiling. Budget: $150–$200 for a straight run to a 2.5-metre ceiling; $250–$350 if elbows are required.

Heat shield

Required if placing stove closer to wall than recommended clearance. Rarely required for new stoves because they already come with such tight clearances and steel units have their own built-in shields. Budget: about $300 for sheet metal shield.

Stove Budget:

$1,000–$2,000 for a mid-sized steel stove; $2,000–$3,500 for cast iron. 

Hearth pad

Acts as the base for the stove, shields the floor from radiant heat, and prevents a fire should embers spill from the firebox. Available as a factory-built unit, or can be homemade from a continuous, non-combustible material such as a cement board base covered by ceramic tile, slate, stone, or brick. Budget: $100–$500.

Installation Budget:

$400–$700 for a relatively simple cottage job, including removal of old stove.

GRAND TOTAL

$2,600–$6,000, plus tax, depending on the stove, layout of the cottage, and chimney.

Published in the September/October 2005 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2005, 2007 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.