Interactive lesson

Stoves and ranges, step by step

Interactive lesson: choosing the appliance and its output, how wood burns, top-down lighting, the range, a boiler with a buffer tank, installing a stove and ash.

Free sample Chapters 1 and 2 (8 steps) are free. The full lesson comes with the Stoves, ranges and boilers module. Already bought? Unlock

This lesson is general guidance, not professional training. Local regulations and expert advice always take precedence. Read our disclaimer.

The whole lesson as text

1. Types of appliance

First choose the appliance that suits your house and the way you live.

Wood-burning range — It cooks, bakes and heats the kitchen. It's simple, but it heats mostly one room and needs frequent loading.
Steel stove — It heats quickly and is cheaper, but it cools quickly too. For a living room or a holiday cottage.
Masonry heater — The fire burns short and hot, 1–2 hours, and the mass of the heater then warms the room for 8–24 hours. It's built by an experienced mason.
When the power goes off — A range, a steel stove and a masonry heater work without electricity. If the boiler is your only heating, have at least one stove or range that needs no power.

Why: An open fireplace turns 10–20 % of the heat in wood into warmth, a good modern stove or masonry heater 70–85 %. A range, a steel stove, a masonry heater and a boiler do different jobs, so there's no one appliance for everyone.

An open fireplace is atmosphere, not heating: it loses more heat than it gives.
A boiler, a gasification boiler and a pellet stove need electricity for the pump, fan or auger.

2. How powerful a stove

The commonest mistake when buying is an oversized stove "so it heats better".

An oversized stove gets damped down — A 12 kW stove in a 30 m² (320 sq ft) room has to be damped down all the time, or it's as hot as a sauna.
Output per m² — Old house with no insulation: 100–150 W per m². Partly insulated: 70–100 W. Insulated: 40–60 W.
A 40 m² example — A living room and kitchen of 40 m² in a partly insulated house: 40 × 85 = 3,400 W, i.e. a stove of 4–6 kW (about 14,000–20,000 Btu/h).
Nominal output — Look at the nominal output, not the maximum, and the efficiency on the data sheet. A stove that runs at a quarter of its output all the time doesn't burn clean.

Why: An oversized stove has to be damped down all the time, or it's as hot as a sauna. A damped-down fire smoulders, soots up and makes tar.

A heat loss calculation for the whole house is done by an engineer or installer.
In Scotland, the uplands and cold US and Canadian zones add 20 % to the result.