HOW TO BURN WOOD SAFELY AND SUSTAINABLY

THE STOVE

• First consider whether burning wood is appropriate for your home. The Centre for Alternative Technology offers information at • Make sure your home is as energy effcient as possible. This• Choose accredited woodstoves or pellet boilers – look for the new HETAS Ecodesign Compliant label.• Batch boilers (which burn a batch of wood and release heat slowly) and pellet boilers are most effcient. Pellet boilers convert about 90% of energy into useful heat. Wood stoves absorb heat, then radiate it into your room. By contrast, most heat from open fires disappears up the chimney, and almost all stoves with back boilers don’t meet smoke-control standards. • Burn hot: use the vents on your stove to keep air flowing in, and the fire hot. Don’t close them to smoulder wood at a low temperature (also known as ‘slumbering’ – keeping a stove smouldering overnight), which produces extra smoke and particulate pollutants.• Use a stovepipe thermometer to check you are burning your wood at the correct temperature.• Keep your stovepipe clean.