Wood Heat: A Practical Guide to Heating Your Home with Wood

Using the latest technologies to stay warm safely, cleanly and efficiently.

Wood Heat is a comprehensive and practical homeowner's guide to using wood as a reliable source of heat with the latest wood stoves and traditional fireplaces. The book explores the efficiency of wood compared to other fuels, the environmental impacts of various fuel types as well as sustainability issues that have led to so many adopting a wood-burning lifestyle.

Heating with wood does more than keep a house warm. Though it can be a hands-on expression of self-reliance, it does bring us closer to the land by using fuel that is renewable and sustainably harvested, and renews our wonder in the cycle of the seasons. And the biggest benefit is that wood heat saves money in the long run.

There are four ways that wood can be used to heat a home or cottage: wood stoves (the most popular), fireplace inserts, pellet stoves and masonry heaters. Wood Heat explains the pros and cons of each.

The book provides all of the information and advice needed to convert to a wood-heated life. How-to topics include step by step directions. They include:

• The comparative advantages of heating with wood
• Buying, cutting, splitting, stacking, storing and moving firewood
• Building the perfect woodpile
• Varieties of wood and their burning characteristics
• The latest technology for burning wood efficiently and cleanly
• Energy content of wood varieties per air-dried cord (BTUs)
• Catalytic and non-catalytic stoves
• Cooking with a wood stove
• How to make a good fire
• Essential hearth and fireplace tools
• Sizing wood-burning appliances
• A chimney maintenance checklist.

Currently, over 10 million U.S. households use wood as their main heating fuel or to supplement other forms of heating. Unstable, increasing fuel costs and the desire of many people to move toward self-sufficiency will only increase the numbers of those choosing to burn wood for heat. Wood Heat is the ideal guide for all.

As an editor for St. Remy Press and Reader's Digest, Andrew Jones has worked on a wide variety of books, from Time-Life's Art of Woodworking series to several editions of The Top 10 of Everything, The Complete Road Atlas of Canada and True North Strange and Free. He lives in Oakville, Ontario.