Mirror mirror on a wall, who's the cleanest of them all?

[begreen]

This is interesting. I would have expected the opposite results, but several new wood stoves are doing better than pellet stoves. It's good to see continuing progress.
https://forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2019/02/non-cats-cleaner-than-catalytic-or.html

 

[wooduser]

<< the non-catalytic stoves averaged 1.2 grams an hour, whereas catalytic stove averaged 1.3 and pellet stoves averaged 1.4.



So..... no significant differences then.

And I don't know about EPA "efficiencies." I presume that is measuring the efficiency of burning up particulates, not the efficiency of actually getting usable heat into a home. I would suppose those are two quite different things.

In another thread, I see that a LOT of people like their stove mounted fans. Why is that?

It appears to be because a fan increases the amount of usable heat that goes into a home. With a high stack temperature, a lot of heat is going up the chimney, because the surface area of the stove isn't great enough to transmit the heat of combustion into heat inside a home.very well.

Add a fan and you reduce the stack temperature and increase the amount of heat going into a room.


After all, the EPA is all about reducing stuff going into the air. Do they care much about how much heat goes into a home? Perhaps I'm wrong though ----if someone has a link to how this "efficiency" is measured and to what purpose, I'd be glad to read it.

 

[begreen]

The blower question is a completely unrelated question. Start a separate thread. New EPA listing now are starting to include efficiency too.

 

[bholler]

<< the non-catalytic stoves averaged 1.2 grams an hour, whereas catalytic stove averaged 1.3 and pellet stoves averaged 1.4.



So..... no significant differences then.

And I don't know about EPA "efficiencies." I presume that is measuring the efficiency of burning up particulates, not the efficiency of actually getting usable heat into a home. I would suppose those are two quite different things.

In another thread, I see that a LOT of people like their stove mounted fans. Why is that?

It appears to be because a fan increases the amount of usable heat that goes into a home. With a high stack temperature, a lot of heat is going up the chimney, because the surface area of the stove isn't great enough to transmit the heat of combustion into heat inside a home.very well.

Add a fan and you reduce the stack temperature and increase the amount of heat going into a room.


After all, the EPA is all about reducing stuff going into the air. Do they care much about how much heat goes into a home? Perhaps I'm wrong though ----if someone has a link to how this "efficiency" is measured and to what purpose, I'd be glad to read it.

Well no technically the epa does not care that much about heat transfer to the home. But stove manufacturers do. If they dont do a good job of it they wont sell many stoves. The benifit of the lack of emissions (other than the environmental benifits which are always good) is you get more complete combustion which means more heat is extracted from each peice of wood. And modern stoves are able to run much lower stack temps while still burning cleanly.

 

[mar13]

Here's a direct link to the February 2019 EPA list (Excel file)
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-08/usepa-certified-wood-heater-list.xlsx

Or if that doesn't work....
(broken link removed to https://www.epa.gov/compliance/list-epa-certified-wood-stoves)

Having looked briefly a while back at the reports from a testing company, I suspect one should look at the reported efficiencies and pollution readings as approximate values.

 

[Highbeam]

You've got to be real careful to never assume that lower emissions means higher efficiency. Some stoves can have high marks for both but often a loss of efficiency is necessary to drive down emissions.

The good news about these newer regulations is that we are supposed to get more actual testing. IMO they still need to kill the LHV/HHV system if they want to get consumers to be able to follow.