Stove Repair Relief Fund to aid families during Coronavirus pandemic

The Alliance for Green Heat is starting a fund that will help families struggling during this pandemic keep their stoves running and operating safely.  Together with the Osprey Foundation and Stove Parts 4 Less, we are launching The Stove Repair Relief Fund!  Please consider becoming a partner in this effort. 

The Stove Repair Relief Fund provides large discounts on stove parts to people who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic. With an initial fund of $20,000 provided by the Alliance for Green Heat, Stove Parts 4 Less, and the Osprey Foundation, eligible customers will receive 30 – 50% off of their parts orders. The intent is to provide essential stove parts to lower-income families who may not be able to afford to keep their wood or pellet stoves working.  It often only takes a small part to get a pellet stove back up and running or make a dangerous wood stove safe again.  

If you are a verified low-income household or have been laid off due to the pandemic, you are eligible for a 30% discount (15% donated by the Alliance for Green Heat and 15% by Stove Parts 4 Less). If you are from a verified low-income household and have been laid off, you are eligible for a 50% discount on your needed parts (25% donated by the Alliance for Green Heat and 25% by Stove Parts 4 Less).

Please note, this offer is only good for wood or pellet stove parts orders up to $500.  It is not applicable to any grill parts, gas stove parts, new stove installs or orders over $500.  If your household has been hit hard by this pandemic and you need a stove part, provide all required information on the sign-up page here to determine if you are eligible.

We are doing a soft launch of this program at the end of this heating season to assess how it works.  We hope to improve and relaunch it this fall during the upcoming heating season.

The program funders want to ensure that the funds are used to help people who really need it, and are asking people to provide documentation of their employment and economic status.  In addition, funders do not want to subsidize the sale of any parts that are available cheaper elsewhere.  Customers should check prices and ensure that Stove Parts 4 Less is offering the best price, which they usually do (make sure to also include shipping and consider the reputation of the seller for aftermarket parts). They will also match any price.  

The Alliance for Green Heat does not normally partner with or endorse specific companies, but these are not normal times.  Our staff, working with our Board, has done their due diligence to move forward with this program and will re-assess it this summer and publicly share that assessment.

We expect this pandemic to severely impact rural wood heating communities for up to a year, and many may turn to wood heating even more than in previous years.  It may also make people less likely to buy new stoves, and need to keep repairing their old ones for longer.  Pellet stove repair and maintenance has always been a challenge, and dealer training and support for older pellet stoves is often poor.  If stove dealers, NFI or CSIA technicians can't access a part elsewhere, they can alert low income clients of this program.  AGH always recommends that stove installations are completed by professionals, but basic repairs and maintenance are often done by stove owners.  If any repair has safety implications, please consult or hire an NFI technician or other professional before trying to do it yourself, even if you procure the part yourself.

The Alliance for Green Heat and Stove Parts for Less are doing everything we can to keep our employees and local communities safe, and we ask that you try and do the same.  Stay home when possible, cover up your nose and mouth with a mask or scarf and do not host large gatherings.  Save lives and give our medical professionals, first responders and people working in essential businesses a break!

Want to do your part too? Support the Stove Repair Relief Fund!

You can donate too!  To help struggling families who heat with wood and pellets, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Stove Repair Relief Fund via the Alliance for Green Heat.  Any contributions to support this cause will be matched dollar for dollar by Stove Parts 4 Less, up to $10,000!  Please contact us if your company or institution wants to partner in this effort or has ideas on how to improve it.  100% of all donations will go to helping low-income families in this time of need.

HPBA 2020 Expo showcases all new stoves to smaller audience

Jack Goldman, right, opens the 2020
Expo in New Orleans.

Updated, April 9, 2020: The hearth industry’s annual marketplace for manufacturers and retailers concluded on March 14^th, a half a day early in New Orleans amidst a dwindling crowd and growing concern about the spread of Covid-19. This was the first hearth industry gathering since the late 1980s in which virtually all the stoves and boilers on the floor were newly redesigned and tested to meet stricter emission standards.  

Some manufacturers were clearly proud of what they felt were genuinely cleaner stoves while others were unconvinced or cynical of the new standard’s impact in the real world. 

Mark Shmorhun of the DOE's
Biotechnology office
attended the Expo to talk to
manufacturers about R&D
funding needs.

Due to Coronavirus concerns, Travis and Jotul, two large manufacturers, pulled out at the last minute, leading to a notably smaller Expo. U.S. Stove, having dropped their HPBA membership, decided not to attend this year, presumably because their inability to meet the 2020 emission standards on most of their appliances weakened their position in the hearth industry.  US Stove has 18 stove models that are 2020 compliant but no 2020 compliant furnaces yet, an area it had once domoniated.  US Stove responded to this blog, saying they are well positioned to move forward with a broad range of new and exciting products.

From the perspective of the Alliance for Green Heat, the 2020 Expo showcased several notable trends, some encouraging and others troubling.  

Vesta gives Best in Show award to an automated wood stove

Possibly the biggest highlight for AGH was seeing automated stoves take more of a foothold in the marketplace. Napoleon’s Eco Smart wood stove won Best in Show at the Vesta Awards, marking the first time that an automated stove won a Vesta Award.  The stove has an optical sensor that monitors particulate matter and can continually adjust air settings to produce a cleaner burn. According to Napoleon, the automation will only add $300 to the price and they expect the complete system with stove to retail for about $2,500. The stove also connects to the Napoleon cloud via the user's smart phone so they can monitor combustion conditions. The user can also allow the company to log data from the stove, providing a valuable record of how the stove runs. The stove is not yet EPA certified, but should be within months. 

The Charnwood Skye 2700, expected to
retail for about $3,300, several hundred
more than its non-automated cousin.

Charnwood, a British manufacturer, also was a finalist in the Vesta award, with their Skye E2700, also an automated stove that does much of what the Napoleon does, but with different technology.  Charnwood will be entering the US market for the first time later this year with this stove. Hugh Wells, head of the Britsh company told AGH, "We are very excited about this product because it does revolutionise how we burn wood by taking out user error." CFS-Teco did the certication testing in Portland and it achieved 78% efficiency, the highest of any non-cat. 

SBI should also have an automated stove on the market within a year, and MF Fire had their automated Catalyst on display at the Expo and have another one in development.  Maxitrol also exhibited a prototype of an automated stove and says that they are taking off in Germany.  Napoleon also won a second Vesta award for their novel "Heat & Cool Electric Fireplace," a mini-split heat pump housed in an electric fireplace.  

2020 stove trends

The 2020 NSPS has resulted in many more catalytic and hybrid stove models. AGH is particularly

Larry Brockman from the EPA's
voluntary Burn Wise program
talks the MF Fire staff about their
automated stove.

happy to see more hybrid models as they help reduce start-up smoke and provide back-up secondary combustion if the operator does not engage the catalyst. A more unnoticed trend is the rapid adoption of the ASTM E3503 cordwood test method. Data from the EPA list of stoves shows the average grams per hour for cordwood tested stoves is 1.6 grams – the exact same average for crib tested stoves. About 45% of all 2020 certified wood stoves were tested with the ASTM cordwood method, which reportedly has more flexibility in its parameters making it easier for manufacturers to pass the certification test. Nearly all of the smaller non-cat stoves were tested with cordwood. Quite a few very affordable stoves that sell primarily in big box and hardware stores are passing the 2020 standards, and some stoves barely had to undergo any redesign.  

A sophisticated, lower priced electronic precipitator

ESPs for wood stoves, considered
far-fetched just a few years ago, are
improving rapidly and popular in
Germany and Switzerland. 

Danish manufacturer Enervex brought a self-cleaning electronic precipitator, known as an ESP. They are commonly used by factories and restaurants, but now small and affordable enough for residential applications. ESPs are a type of scrubber that uses static electricity to remove particulate matter from exhaust fumes before the particulates exit the smokestack. Enervex’s innovation is to design a residential ESP that is self-cleaning, often a big problem, and to bring the price down. They expect theirs will sell for $1,200- $1,600 when it comes on the US market. There is a quickly growing market for them in Germany, now that they are recognized by the country's eco-label, Blue Swan, and some cities may require them. OekoSolve, a Swiss company, made the ESP being tested in Fairbanks.

HPBA recruits Appalachia Service Project to take 2015 stoves in May

To address the fate of potentially hundreds of wood stoves that are 2015 certified but not allowed to be sold after May 15, 2020, HPBA negotiated with the EPA to allow retailers to donate stoves to a non-profit who can them install them. HPBA is teaming up with the Christian ministry Appalachia Service Project, based in Tennessee, who repairs homes in Central Appalachia, making them warmer,

AGH President John Ackerly with
Adam Bean of the Appalachia
Service Project

safer, and drier. At the Expo, AGH met with Adam Bean, Home Repair Coordinator for the group, who is quickly learning about wood stove installations and trying to estimate how many stoves his group has the capacity to install, which will partly depend on securing donated NFI installing and training.

Pellet stoves out of the limelight

Even though pellet stoves were relatively easy to redesign and test at 2 grams an hour or lower, the market for pellet stoves has not been particularly good and there were not many on the Expo floor. There were no pellet stove finalists in the Vesta Awards, which may indicate a pause in innovation in the North American market.

EPA announces final NSPS rule during Expo

On the first day of the conference, the EPA formally announced that they would not allow a retailer sell-through. The EPA had said on October 15, 2019 that entities should follow the compliance dates but some felt that there was still a chance for a sell-through. HPBA expressed its disappointment in a written statement while the Pellet Fuel Institute claimed a victory because the EPA removed minimum requirements from pellet fuel while retaining the prohibition that pellet fuel must not contain any of the prohibited fuels listed in the 2015 NSPS. There remains considerable debate about whether the 5-year timeline would have been enough if manufacturers had started redesigning and testing to the 2020 standards early in the process. Key excerpts of the EPA ruling provide detailed insight into why the EPA did not allow a sell-through. Some did start early and began offering 2020 compliant models to their retailers as soon as 2018, while most did not start releasing 2020 models until 2019 or even this year.  The issue was far more complicated because manufacturers had large inventories of 2015 stoves and some needed the cooperation of retailers to buy their 2015 inventory well into 2019. An HPBA mailer to retailers in 2019 said: “retailers and distributors should NOT immediately stop buying anything that doesn’t meet Step 2” in part because there wasn’t enough variety and in part because manufacturers still needed revenue from sales of their 2015 inventory.

EPA holds 3-day wood smoke workshop

One of the main reasons AGH attends the annual HPBA Expo is to participate in workshops

The wood smoke workshop brought
scores of experts from across the US
to share new knowledge, tactics and
success stories.

organized by the EPA on wood smoke reduction strategies. This year the workshop was coordinated and supported by EPA's Burn Wise, the Western States Air Resources Council (WESTAR), the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) and National Tribal Air Association (NTAA) and was going to be the largest one ever, with nearly 100 federal, state, local and tribal participants registered.  But some states like Washington banned their employees from travel and many other participants cancelled, leaving a group of about 60. The workshop mainly consisted of a series of talks and powerpoints about change out programs, cord wood test methods, the impact of the NSPS, DOE funding opportunities for stove R&D, retrofits and ESPs, low cost consumer air quality sensors, indoor air quality issues, addressing wood smoke complaints, etc. Most of the powerpoints can be dowloaded here. AGH also hosted a gumbo and etouffee networking reception on Frenchman Street for all the participants. 

The 2021 HPBA Expo is scheduled for March 4-6 in Nashville, Tennessee.