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.