Wood Burning Stoves

Woodburners

A woodburner, (or wood burning stove), has a flat bottom on which the wood burns on a bed of wood ash. Wood certainly burns slowly better in a woodburning stove than in a multifuel stove, so in this sense a woodburner is better suited to burning wood (as the name "woodburner" would suggest).

Slow burning on a Woodburner

However, even using a woodburner, it is generally not efficient to slow burn wood when compared to coal, so try to avoid slow burning or overnight burning in woodburners.

For information on which types of wood to burn and how to best prepare it visit our wood for burning page

Woodburner Chimney Liner

It is always good practice to line a chimney when fitting any stove, whether it is a woodburning stove or a multifuel stove, (as their greater efficiency means colder flue gasses, leading to tar build up in the chimney), but if you are planning to do any amount of woodburning, lining and insulating the chimney is a must - see Lining a Chimney.

The Carbon Consequences of Burning Wood

Trees are mostly made of carbohydrate. To grow, trees take in carbon dioxide from the air and using the energy from the sun, turn it into carbohydrate. We chop the trees down, let them dry and then burn them for heat. As well as heat being produced the carbon dioxide that the trees originally trapped from the air is also released. Most firewood available in the uk comes from sustainable forestry - where a tree is felled another is planted. So the carbon that has been released is effectively trapped again by another tree. This means that overall carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stay the same and so this does not contribute to the greenhouse effect - apart from the carbon released by processing and transporting the wood.

For more information on the CO2 content of fuels please see our CO2 emissions of fuels graph.