We heat our house entirely with a single woodstove. An imported Vermont Castings from your dear USA, excellent stove, 85% efficient. The house is 1900 sq ft, and our indoor temperature ranges between 21 C in the morning to about 25 C when we start up the stove in the afternoon. The bedrooms keep a nice 21-22 all day, as they are furthest from the stove.

And you can cook on the stove when we have blackouts.

We have our own forest, and also sell about five times our own firewood needs, all sustainable. Also about the same amount of lumber and paper pulp wood.

On the other hand our house is properly insulated as most Swedish houses are. It doesn't require much firewood to heat a house if it's insulated, and the temperature doesn't drop especially fast. Some heat is stored in the masonry chimney, but the rest is simply stored in the air and last long enough.

As for the nonsense on emissions, a modern stove like the Vermont (or a Swedish Nibe) produces very little emissions and very little ash as they burn clean. On the plus side for the Vermont is that it can be choked for higher efficiency and longer burn, and still not leave much ash or give emissions.

In fact, people who burn wood live longer and are healthier. One of the reasons is the excercise, another is that it's more common to live in the countryside and thus get fresh air, but also that anti-oxidants from the smoke is good for you.

Anyway, first measure is to insulate your house. We have almost a foot thick insulation in the walls and 1.5 feet on the roof, and high windows that bounce back the energy into the house instead of leaking.

In Finland there is a law stipulating that all single houses should have at least one wood stove or similar, as a backup if nothing else. Not so here in Sweden, although most do.

I know dozens of people who heat exclusively with a wooden stove, although it's supposed to be impossible and they are counted in statistics as using direct electric heat, and many, many more burning wood in a central heating furnace (usually with water tanks for energy storage and efficient burn).

But on the other hand, there's plenty of forest in Sweden, always has been.

San;
Your chimney alterations would help. The greater advantages in a complete masonry stove includes very signifigantly A) The secondary combustion chamber, raising temperatures within the great mass of the core furnace and burning the wood as thoroughly as possible.. and B) a series of ducts crafted into the stone/brickwork which carries the smoke down through the sides and back of the Massive Block, further extracting heat from it, only exiting to the chimney back at the bottom of the unit.

There are masons' groups that specialise (see my reply to Nate) in these, and work to share info on who is nearest to a potential customer, plus useful knowledge about the stoves themselves. Both Masonry's that my Mother had built were beautiful craftspieces that adorned the heart of the house, they would be cozy to cuddle up against and read or nap, fully days after a burn (often 48 hrs, except in the deepest cold), the cats would sleep on top of it, we baked bread, turkeys, and pizzas in the 'Expansion Chamber' (Secondary Combustion), soon after the 2-hour burn was done, as they had been fitted with oven doors above the fire-windows, for just that purpose.

Even this year, visiting the older of these two homes, the current owner said this has been his cheapest home to heat, in Maine's white Mts, while his other homes had been in New Jersey! It's not excessive to say that this could be a clear advantage in the value of the house, were you to want to sell it.

As far as Solar.. this older home was also Passive solar, in addition to the Masonry stove. The new owner replaced a lot of the south windows with less glazed area, and has decided to use a gas heater as a supplement.. but we never did. It didn't take full advantage of its solar potential, but had it done so, I'm sure the two together would have been enough except for very extreme conditions.

Bob Fiske

(feel free to email.. listed under my account info)