Article from New York Times illustrates why cottagers north of the border should look at replacing their old technology wood stoves.

Your Second Home Heating With Wood
Warm, Cozy and Cleaner
By STEVE BAILEY
WHETHER your weekend getaway sits on a Georgia island or in the forests of Maine, at some time during the year you’re probably going to have to heat it. If your property has a lot of trees, there’s a chance you can get the heat you need at almost no cost.
Second-home owners can learn from people who heat their full-time residences with wood. Kathi Hooper, director of the Lincoln County, Mont., Environmental Health Department, knows about heating with firewood. “I grew up with it,” she said. Today, her 1,400-square-foot house is comfortably heated by a wood-burning stove.
Firewood is a primary source of home heat in Libby, in Montana’s northwest corner, and wood smoke has become a growing winter air-pollution problem over the years. The Hoopers and about 1,000 other households there exchanged old stoves for new ones between 2005 and 2007 in a program involving the Environmental Protection Agency, the State of Montana and the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, a trade group. “Our old stove was a homemade metal box,” Ms. Hooper said, “and smoke would pour out whenever you opened the door to stoke the fire.”
With the new stoves, the people of Libby experienced a 70 percent reduction in indoor air pollution during the heating season, according to a University of Montana study. “It’s been noticeable,” Ms. Hooper said of air-quality improvements indoors and out. “Now, when you open the door of the stove, no smoke goes out into the room. And outdoors we have fewer gray, hazy days. We have a lot of inversions; we’re a narrow valley with high mountains and no wind, so the air just stagnates.”
Modern wood-burning stoves not only burn more cleanly than old ones, they reduce wood consumption. “We now use half the wood we used to,” Ms. Hooper said, requiring about four cords all winter to heat the house they live in full time. They get their wood free from their five-acre property and by harvesting fallen trees on nearby public lands.
People without their own wood source often buy it by the cord (that’s a stack four feet high, four feet deep and eight feet long). A cord of seasoned and split firewood was recently offered on Craigslist for $230 delivered in the Lower Hudson Valley; in Monterey County, Calif., a firewood service offered to deliver a cord for $280.
“A lot of second-home owners are in rural areas with free sources of firewood,” said Leslie Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association. “The key is to have an efficient appliance for burning the wood.” New fireplace inserts, essentially wood-burning stoves that fit into a fireplace, and new freestanding stoves have what Ms. Wheeler described as a two-burn system, burning the wood first, then the smoke so that less of it goes up the stovepipe and more heat goes into the room.
It’s important to burn only seasoned (thoroughly dry) wood. Green or freshly cut wood does not burn well and produces more creosote, the tarlike goo that can build up inside your flue or stovepipe and eventually become a fire hazard. Frequently used chimneys and stovepipes should be checked and possibly cleaned annually. Firewood should be stored away from the house, off the ground and protected from rain.
Even if your weekend house has a working furnace, there may be substantial savings in adding a wood-burning stove or fireplace insert. A recent search of an online stove dealer, Discount Stove & Fireplace (www.discountstove.com) found inserts from $1,750 to about $2,700, and stoves from $800 to $2,750. Prices for stoves start at about $400 at large home-improvement stores. Installation costs vary, but expect to pay $400 to $1,000.
Annie Calhoun’s family has been heating their 2,000-square-foot vacation house in Killington, Vt., with wood since it was built in 1964. “My dad is a longtime forester and has been very involved in alternative energy for a long time,” said Ms. Calhoun, who lives in Lincoln, Mass. “We have an Ashley stove and a Franklin stove. Loggers used to drop off logs, plus we bring some wood from land we own in New Hampshire. And we get some wood from the property itself.”
Some weekend-home owners use firewood to supplement oil or electric heat. They set their furnace’s thermostat at 50 or 55 degrees when they’re away to keep pipes from freezing, and when they arrive for the weekend, they quickly get a wood fire going.

Climate change expert professor from Queen's is interviewed on CBC radio earlier this year.

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL GROGAN RE: WOOD STOVESWEI CHEN (CBCK-FM): Many homeowners are cranking up the heat in order to fight off the chill this winter. That means using more electricity, heating oil or natural gas. Unfortunately the result can be greater carbon dioxide emissions and higher costs. That reality prompted a study from a climate change expert at Queen’s University. He discovered that heating a home with both a natural gas furnace and a wood-burning stove is not only more energy efficient, but slightly cheaper than relying solely on fossil fuels. Paul Grogan is professor of biology at Queen’s University, and he joins us now. Good morning.PAUL GROGAN (Professor, Queen’s University): Good morning, Wei. Thanks for your interest.CHEN: Oh, well what led you to conduct this research?GROGAN: Well it’s a personal story really. We installed a wood stove about two years ago, and I’m teaching at Queen’s and we had this undergraduate course on climate change and fossil fuel issues and that kind of thing, and I said well why don’t I bring the students to the house and talk about the environmental, economic and social advantages and disadvantages of trying to supplement our domestic heating with this wood stove?CHEN: And so what did you find?GROGAN: Essentially what we did was we found that there was a 60 percent reduction in the CO2 emissions to the atmosphere as a result of heating with the wood in combination with the natural gas as opposed to prior to that when we just had natural gas.CHEN: Huh. And how much… how much of the wood stove did you use? How much natural gas? What were the percentages?GROGAN: Yeah. We pretty much kept the wood stove going as much as we could; we burned five full cords of wood which is quite a substantial amount. And then of course we did the economics to see how much did the wood cost us and how much wood we used… (inaudible) natural gas. And there’s a slight benefit to using the wood, and it’s about $50 per year as far as we could work out. But nevertheless from the environmental point of view we see there’s a huge advantage in terms of making some contribution towards reducing our CO2 emissions.CHEN: I always thought that burning a wood stove was bad because of the pollution that caused.GROGAN: Yes, that’s a very good question, and I should point out that we were using one of these high efficiency second recombustion stoves. And there are… the more traditional wood stove is not as efficient, and therefore… and one basically has to burn more wood to achieve the same heat output. And secondly and perhaps most importantly the second recombustion of the modern stove burns the smoke before it’s emitted, so the reductions in smoke are about 70 percent, so that’s a huge factor in this thing. In other words from an environmental benefit point of view, you’re reducing CO2 emissions, but the out-smoke emissions are relatively small.CHEN: Now what is the emissions that come from your wood stove then? How much compared to what comes out of the fact that you’re burning your gas?GROGAN: Right. Well… one tends to think about these things in terms of tonnes of carbon emitted per person per year. I don’t know if you remember about five or six years ago of the thing called the One Tonne Challenge?CHEN: Yeah.GROGAN: That the federal government had to try to encourage people to be more aware of the fact that they’re producing CO2 which essentially a waste product and affecting climate change. So prior to installing a wood stove we were emitting 2.5 tonnes per person per year of CO2, and then after installing a wood stove the net emissions were about one tonne per person per year. So it’s a big difference.CHEN: Now you said that you went through five cords which is quite a lot you said.GROGAN: That’s right, yeah.CHEN: So even with one of these super energy efficient wood stoves, it still goes through quite a bit. Is that a good use, even though I know it is a renewable resource, but it takes so long…GROGAN: Yeah, and that’s—CHEN: for trees to grow.GROGAN: That’s right, that’s the key factor here is that we’re considering the wood as a renewable resource, in other woods that it’s carbon neutral. So just give me a second to explain that. You know if you’re driving along the 401 and you look into the forest on either side, you’ll see trees growing, and you’ll also see dead and decaying trees. And the trees that are dying and decaying are decomposing and releasing their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. So essentially if the wood is harvested in a sustainable way, in other words if the forest is managed properly, and the dead wood or old wood is taken out, essentially by burning it in the stove, you’re just increasing the rate at which the CO2 is released into the atmosphere, but the total amount is the same whether it would burn in the stove or whether it would naturally decompose on the forest floor.CHEN: Okay, I see. So do you recommend then that everyone get a wood stove?GROGAN: Well, it’s not gonna suit everyone. So the third aspect of this study which the students really had fun with was the notion of what are the sort of lifestyle changes, the social aspects of this? So they did a survey, and the things that came out as being important from consumers’ perspective in terms of deciding perhaps to use a wood stove would be things like effectiveness of heating and operation costs and that kind of thing. But it’s very clear that older people for example may not have the energy to literally get up and stack wood, arrange for its supply and then obviously feed the fire on a regular basis. So there’s some situations where it wouldn’t really pay off. On the other hand in rural locations and where people may have their own wood lot, the economic saving is very, very substantial because obviously their wood didn’t cost anything.CHEN: Well it’s very interesting. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.GROGAN: Thank you.CHEN: Bye now.GROGAN: I’m off for a cup of fossil fuel-heated coffee.CHEN: (Laughs.) All right, bye.GROGAN: Bye.CHEN: Paul Grogan is a professor of biology at Queen’s University. We reached him this morning at his home in Kingston.*****

Ontario Woodlot Association Media release

Ontario Woodlot Association
275 County Rd. 44
Kemptville, ON
K0G 1J0

Media Release


For Immediate Release
September 9, 2009

Firewood is a Renewable Green Energy Source!

Wednesday September 9, 2009: Rural Ontarians have a long history of using fuelwood for home heating and could be considered one of the early leaders in the movement towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels by using this renewable green energy source.The harvest of fuelwood is one of the essential management tools used by woodlot owners to help maintain and enhance our forested landscape. The sale of fuelwood is an important economic driver within our rural communities and is a cost effective heating source used by tens of thousands of rural landowners. As the provincial government moves towards developing new clean and renewable energy initiatives the Ontario Woodlot Association has prepared the discussion paper Fuelwood, the Environment and the 21st Century that provides federal, provincial and municipal leaders and the general public with key and important facts linking sustainable forestry practices, advanced wood burning technology and good wood burning practices with cleaner air.

“We believe the implementation of the recommendations outlined in the discussion paper will result in cleaner air, assist in maintaining healthy forests and work towards building a stronger green economy”, says Pieter Leenhouts, President of the Ontario Woodlot Association. “By managing our forests sustainably, we help the environment, increase carbon sequestration and improve our forests while continuing to provide accessible renewable green energy to Ontarians. Fuelwood has to be part of that formula.”

A copy of the discussion paper Fuelwood, the Environment and the 21st Century is available on the website http://www.ont-woodlot-assoc.org/info_pub_fuelwood.html or by contacting the Ontario Woodlot Association.

For more information contact:

Wade Knight, Executive Director
Ontario Woodlot Association
(613) 258-0110 ext. #223
E-mail