Safety: A quick look and you know instantly, the thermometer tells you if your fire is burning too hot, with the danger of a chimney fire. Or too cool, with incomplete combustion, which causes smoldering woodsmoke to condense as hazardous creosote.
Extends Life of Your Stove:
Excessive smoke or excessive heat will degrade catalytic combustors in the new EPA stoves. Without a thermometer, you're merely guessing at conditions in your firebox. A small investment in a stovepipe thermometer can pay handsome dividends, by guarding against premature replacement of your wood stove.
Less Frequent Chimney Cleaning:
Creosote, the bane of stovepipes, builds up surprisingly rapidly, especially in airtight stoves, when fires burn at consistently low temperatures. Stovepipes from non-catalytic combustor stoves should always be equipped with thermometers to enable the owner to avoid operating conditions where creosote builds up and causes frequent cleaning of the flue.
Longer-Lasting Fires:
When woodstoves burn too hot, flue gases rush up the chimney and valuable heating energy is lost forever. An inefficient fire leads to unnecessary reloading of fuel.
Saves Money:
The cost of woodstoves, chimney cleaning and wood... A thermometer for your woodstove saves you needless expenses and effort by teaching you how to operate your stove at best efficiency and lowest total cost.
Conserves Wood Resources:
If for no other reason, you should monitor your stove's combustion in order to avoid unnecessary waste of fuel -- truly $ flying up the chimney!
Environmental Air Quality:
The woodstove that burns efficiently generates less air pollution. Older woodstoves especially require thermometers to control smoke emissions. Owners of new stoves benefit, too, by using a thermometer to help optimize stove performance.
Coming Up:
In the next few posts we will describe:
1) What type of thermometer to pick for your stove
2) How to install a thermometer.
Related Posts:
Safe Wood Stove Practice: Knowing the Temperature
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