Keep the insects, dirt, wood and smoke outside!!

 It is surprising how much more than just wood enters your home when you bring in firewood to feed an indoor wood stove heater or boiler.  This can affect the health of those susceptible to breathing conditions such as asthma, bronchitis and other allergies. The inevitable indoor smoke will also exacerbate these conditions and leave a residue of ash in the vicinity of the indoor wood stove heater irrespective of how much care is taken.  

Not enough heating from your indoor wood stove?

Indoor wood stoves invariably only heat the immediate adjacent area or room in which they are located. Even indoor wood boilers only have small volume water jackets or limited heat exchange coils due to internal space constraints. Basically by their very nature indoor wood boilers can not supply enough water for perimeter radiators or forced air heating. How will you deal with this dual output issue, central heating and hot washing water or if you need to heat multiple dwellings or outbuildings?

Irrespective of how well your property is draft excluded, indoor wood stoves / boilers by their very nature cause a circulation of air within your home. They heat the air in the room in which the stove is located. This in turn causes the heat to rise out through the chimney. In order to avoid a partial vacuum and also feed it with more air to breath and to sustain the fire combustion, they draw additional air in from the room and by virtue from outside. So in effect indoor wood stoves / boilers draw in the cold air in to the property which you are trying to heat. This is inefficient and wasteful of valuable energy.

What about the environmental issues and carbon emissions??? Surely burning wood adds to the Eco issues???

As a matter of fact OWB units are classed as carbon neutral in that they do not discharge any more carbon than would be present in the existing wood. After all, wood is a natural part of the environment and if the wood was allowed to follow the complete life cycle it would die, rot and still release the absorbed carbon held within it. Burning wood does not release any more carbon than would be naturally present in the environment.  

However, carbon heavy fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal are a concentrated source formed over millions of years under conditions of heat and pressure within the Earth and when they are burnt to release the stored energy they also discharge this encapsulated carbon into the atmosphere. This adds to the much publicised carbon dioxide generated Global Warming.