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Specialty Stoves

Stoves have been around for a long time, and manufacturers are a creative lot – always coming up with brilliant new ideas (sometimes based on really old good ideas.)

Here are a few specialty stoves that can be wonderful in certain circumstances.

Biomass Stove

Do you happen to live in an area where there are tons of unwanted cherry pits? Olive pits? Excess corn? Excess wheat? If so, then a biomass stove might be just the thing. These stoves are designed specifically to burn unconventional organic material. If you live in a big city, this probably won’t be feasible. But what if you happen to live in the cherry processing center of the US? Or perhaps you live in farm country and there is left over wheat or corn begging for a good use. As luck would have it, these organic materials burn rather cleanly. In other respects, these stoves operate like a standard Pellet stove, with a hopper which holds the stuff to be burned. The hopper delivers a slow steady amount of fuel (rate of burn is set by the user) to the fire in the stove.

Masonry Heater

This super efficient stove extracts more heat from wood than even the most economical conventional wood burning stove. A masonry heater is a wood burning stove, but is encased in brick, stone, adobe or cement. The wood is burned, and the resulting hot exhaust air is routed through a labyrinth like flue that winds its way through the stone or cement, which soaks up this heat and radiates it slowly into the room. Regular wood burning stoves can make a rather dry heat. The masonry heater makes a much more comfortable heat. And, the heat soaked up by the mass of the stove from a single burn can keep heating the room for 6 – 24 hours.

Passive Solar Construction

If you think about modern construction techniques today, it seems rather absurd that almost no effort is made to align the house with its surroundings. Nice tree? Cut it down, it’s in the way. Sloping hill out back? Squish it! Flatten it! Good breeze from the east? Breeze? Who cares? With a little effort, a new house

could be integrated with its surroundings and thereby be far more efficient. In fact, there is a whole school of study out there of ways to integrate one’s house so perfectly with its surroundings that most of the heating and cooling needs for are taken care of by Mother Nature herself. Some of the concepts used in passive solar construction are careful orientation of the house, precise calculations of wall thickness and overhang, glass in the right places, and a meticulous design for natural circulation of air. The folks who know how to do this can be masters, and the houses they design can be masterpieces which use almost no energy for heating and cooling. Unfortunately, most builders are so pressured by market forces that while they might want to integrate the houses they build, they find they cannot. For the glory of a passive solar house to take place, the owner must take charge and make the project a labor of love and devotion. Wonderful idea. Takes a lot of time however.

Anyway, there is a way to use some of the concepts of passive solar on an existing house. All that is needed is a south facing wall with sunlight. Here is a diagram showing how this system works. It requires no electricity, and runs on its own. Many people install this system on a workshop which would otherwise be icy cold in the winter. No heater – this one included – will work on a drafty, poorly insulated structure. So any structure would need to be properly sealed and insulated before anything else. These systems can be purchased ready to install, or if you feel the urge to build and be handy, you can make one yourself.

Geothermal

If you look up geothermal on the internet, you’ll find two drastically different meanings. One deals with underground pockets of super hot water or magma which have been heated by the earth’s core. Think Reykjavik Iceland.

They run much of their municipal heating system on that kind of geothermal. Excellent idea - gigantic systems. For our purposes however, we would be interested in something ever so slightly smaller. Like house or business size. For this application, geothermal has an entirely different meaning and it starts with this lovely little concept…

Where do you live? Let’s say I live in New York. Dig down into the earth near my home and the temperature is probably about 55F (12.8C.) And let’s say my friend lives in Georgia. Dig down into the earth there, and the temperature is… about 55F. Hmmmm, that’s enough to give someone great ideas! Like, if the temperature is constant, why not use it? If its way colder than that in the house, extract some heat! If it is way hotter, then grab some of that cool.

Someone did think of this… some time ago in fact. Geothermal has been in use for decades by those who are truly “in the know”. Here’s how it works – very simply:

A series of “loops” are put into the ground – down where the temperature is constant. These loops or tubes are used to exchange heat with the ground. During cold times, heat from the earth is extracted and intensified and pumped into the building. On hot days, the process is reversed and the cool from the earth is pumped into the building. In other words, the system takes care of heating and cooling. Truly fabulous darling!

Loops come in different styles. Horizontal means the loop is a few feet below ground and spread out horizontally. Got a big huge yard and haven’t built yet? Or a big yard you feel like digging up? Horizontal would be great.

A “vertical” loop would be good if you did not have a big lawn begging to be dug up. It goes straight down into the ground – way down into the ground. Got a cousin in the well digging business? – call him up, we’re going vertical!

The “slinky” style is so named because part of it looks like… a slinky. In this style, a trench is dug, and the tube which is laid in that trench is shaped like a slinky with many coils. The increased surface area of the tube makes up for the fact that perhaps your lawn is not large enough for a horizontal system, or you’d rather not dig it up (truthfully, installation of any kind of geothermal system means some degree of lawn dishevelment.) Geothermal is wonderfully efficient, but does require electricity to run the pump and the compressor. And here’s something we have not mentioned yet. Other that what is needed to make the electricity to run the pumps, there is no combustion involved in the process of geothermal. Stoves are efficient and clean, but not as clean as this!

All these great attributes! We sound like a parent bragging about their brilliant child.

Alas, there is a downside, and that is high upfront costs - as in installation costs. However, let’s say you are building new in a climate where you will need both heating and cooling. You’d have to install some sort of heating system and then a separate air conditioning system. When you calculate the cost of both, it is usually comparable to one geothermal system.

As you can see, there is no need to limit your thinking to electricity, gas or oil when contemplating heating and cooling your home. Some day, these other ideas will be commonplace. Why not be a pioneer?

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