How to Get the Best Value from Your Wood Heater

Wood heater is an effective way to keep warm your home and is also great for giving your home some rustic ambiance. There's nothing like sitting round the heater with friends and family on a cold day while enjoying the warmth of the fire. Wood heaters can be expensive to keep fuelled up though and they can have some issues if you are not careful with them. Here's a few tips on how to get the best value from your wood heater.

Pick the best installation location

The nearer to the centre of your house that you install wood heaters the more effectively they will heat the house. The hot air produced by a wood heater is at a higher pressure than cold air as heating the air causes it to expand. This means that the hot air will want to spread out to fill the available space in your house. It will also want to rise upwards. By installing the heater near the centre of your house and on the bottom floor of a multi-story house you are giving it the maximum opportunity to spread out and fill the house. You should also try to install wood heaters near the centre of the rooms in the house that are most often used. The lounge, kitchen, and bedrooms will be where people will mostly hang out and are the most important rooms to heat as a result.

Avoid too many bends in the flue of the heater

As the exhaust gasses rise up and flow through the flue pipes of wood heaters, they deposit creosote and other materials onto the side of the flue. This waste will eventually need to be cleaned off with a wire brush or it will become a fire hazard. Sharp bends in the heater flue make it hard to clean the flue pipe and also tend to accumulate more waste. These bends are a common cause of house fires so try to ensure that the flue pipe is installed so that it is as straight and vertical as possible. In addition to drastically reducing your chance of a fire this will also cut down on the cost of having the flue cleaned.

Use a ceiling fan to circulate air

If you've ever stood on a stepladder in a heated house during winter, then you know how much heat accumulates near the ceiling. That heat can be useful in the bottom floor of a two-storey house, as it will be heating the floor of the upper part of the house. In a single-story house, it is just wasted heat though. A ceiling fan installed near your wood heater can blow that hot air down and force it to circulate which will reduce your heating cost and result in a more uniformly heated house. It can also help to move the hot air into the far reaches of your house which may otherwise be left poorly heated.

Buy wood early to ensure that it is dry

Firewood takes up a huge amount of space in the woodyard or garden supply centre that you probably buy your wood from. Most firewood merchants can't store enough wood to give it time to dry out and huge piles of wood tend to not get enough air to the interior to let the wood dry anyway. As a result of this merchants tend to buy wholesale firewood on an ad-hock basis and the moisture content can vary widely as a result. By buying your wood early and giving it plenty of time to dry out you will get better heat efficiency from the wood and also ensure that there is less build-up of creosote and other problem materials in the flue of the wood heater. Ideally you should buy your wood over the summer so that it is dry and ready to keep you warm for the winter.

If you take some care when installing and using your wood heater then it will give you solid value for the lifetime of the heater. Keep in mind that heaters are a prime cause of house fires if they are poorly installed or improperly used and remember that they need to be regularly maintained to ensure they work efficiently and safely. Your heater should give you plenty of warmth to keep your house and family from the cold for decades to come, so make sure you give that heater the care it needs.