Pellet stove owners needed for survey on pellet heating

 The Alliance for Green Heat has designed  a new survey to gain insight into how and why people use pellet stoves,  and what they like and don’t like about them.  Compared to the more traditional cord wood stoves, less is known about pellet stove users. Many studies and government agencies do not even distinguish between the two when discussing wood heat.  

If you used a pellet stove for home heating in the past year, please take the  Pellet Stove Survey.

 

The US Census does not distinguish between wood stoves and pellet stoves, but the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) began publishing basic information on the number of households using pellet stoves in 2009.  According to the EIA, one million Americans use pellet stoves.  Unlike the US Census, the EIA does not ask whether households use an appliance for primary or secondary heat, so it is unknown if pellet stove owners use their stove for primary heat more than wood stove users.  

 

This  survey was designed to be short to encourage maximum participation, and cover key issues.  Respondents may participate anonymously. Respondents who leave an email address, are eligible for a $75 gift card and/or have the results sent to them when the survey closes.  

 

Please take the  Pellet Stove Survey if you use one.

Low-cost air quality monitors excel at detecting levels of indoor wood smoke

At $39 - $45, real time PM sensors can empower homeowners – and neighbors 

Ever wonder if your wood stove or pellet stove elevates your risk of inhaling particles that could endanger your health?   Recent advances in technology now make indoor air quality monitors small inexpensive and simple for people with wood and pellet stoves - or fireplaces.  The Alliance for Green heat bought and tested several and found the Tempo S1+ Smart Air Quality Monitor is the most versatile, with Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor,  to be a close second.

 

The Govee Air Quality Monitor (right) shows PM, temperature and humidity on a digital display.  The Amazon Smart Quality Monitor on the rleft ($79) only has a small light indicating air quality.

Not all wood and pellet stoves result in poor indoor air quality.  But there is little research that compares different types of wood and pellet stove installations. The human nose is very sensitive and if you smell wood smoke in your home often, that is enough of a reason to look into the problem.  

 

Low-cost sensors like the TemTop S1+, the Govee or the Amazon sensor (that connects to Alexa) detect particulate matter (PM2.5) and can help homeowners better understand the issue and may be a motivating factor to take action, which could mean calling a chimney sweep or just cleaning your pellet stove better before lighting it.  

In the future, such monitors could easily be built into stoves, which could be a significant advance in helping homeowners understand how to best run them.  In 2025, MF Fire plans to introduce an aftermarket sensor package designed to help homeowners operate their stoves better, but they do not measure indoor PM.

Feb. 20. The Govee (left) and Amazon (right) are both easy to set up on your phone and see temperature, humidity, PM and CO on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. We found they correlated relatively well. They both spiked around 7 PM, cooking dinner but the Amazon did not record much of a morning spike when I lit the stove and cooked breakfast. Both calculated the daily average at exactly 3ug/m3.

On Feb. 19 both the Govee (right) and Amazon (left) monitors caught the morning start-up/breakfast and elevated evening PM.  The Govee had a 2 ug/m3 daily average and the Amazon had a 3 ug/m3 daily average.  One big benefit of the Govee is that is shows temperature on the same screen as PM, and you can see when the pellet stove is turned off around 10PM and turned back on around 6:30 AM. 

 

Digital displays are now everywhere in our homes and cars and they tell us everything from when to add air to our tires to when to change the filter on a furnace.  But for those of us who heat our homes with wood stoves and pellet stoves, the health of our kids and our spouses should be paramount. The EPA also has good information on indoor air monitors.

Another benefit of the Govee is that it pushes a message to your phone, wherever you are, when PM spikes.  At 6:40, just as I was lighting the pellet stove, it briefly spiked to 35 ug/m3, and I got a message on the cellphone when I looked at it, 15 minutes later, at 7:05.  The average on Feb. 21^st was 3 ug/M3.and there was also a little PM elevation around dinner.

 

Low-cost sensors are also useful for neighbors who may be breathing wood smoke from someone else’s wood stove.  When outdoor air quality is bad, it leaks into homes and these sensors can help neighbors talk to each other using data, not emotional reactions, to wood smoke issues.

 

Data from my home’s pellet stove

 

My pellet stove emits a little smoke on start up, but I found that after the first half hour, there is no air quality impact that the sensors could detect. I turn my pellet stove off when we go to bed and when we wake up the sensors usually say the house has 1 µg/m³, meaning 1 microgram per cubic meter of air. By the time the pellets catch fire, it usually reads 6 or 7 ug/m3 but it can also go up to 30 or 40. But if we fry something for dinner, the sensor often goes to 30 or 40, and if we over fry something to the extent you can smell something is nearly burning, the sensor can read 100 or even 200. Our conclusion is that the riskiest behavior in the house is cooking, but your house may be very different, and a wood stove may emit far more indoor smoke than my pellet stove.

 

If I don’t clean the burn pot of my pellet stove, it takes longer for the pellets to light off, and there can be quite a bit of smoke. Currently, I have a Harman Accentra but I had the same problem with a Ravelli.  It appears that the exhaust fan doesn’t go on until the stove sensors fire in the burn pot, but by then the smoke has found any available crack to leak into the room.  This seems like a design flaw, but we all know that positive pressure in a firebox is a recipe for problems.  

 

In our house, we use an older gas stove that is located in the kitchen, about 15 feet away from the PM sensors which were placed just 2 feet away from the pellet stove. Our impression is that regardless of whether you have a gas, electric or induction stove, frying will reduce air quality, particularly at higher temperatures.  We don’t have a exhaust hood or fan above our cook stove, which we presume would be a big help to reduce PM from cooking. A hood with a fan exhausting to the outside may be the best investment in homes that fry food often.

 

Indoor air quality for wood stoves, pellet stoves and fireplaces

Conventional wisdom, based on tens of thousands of wood and pellet stove users, is that indoor smoke is usually far worse with wood stoves.  Part of the problem is that wood stoves need to be reloaded, usually every 1 – 4 hours, and depending on wind conditions outside, how quickly the door is opened, etc. the negative pressure in the firebox is broken, and smoke spills into the room. When a pellet stove is reloaded, you open a door to the hopper, not to the firebox, so there is no impact on pressure in the firebox and no opportunity for smoke leakage. Also, since the exhaust flue is powered by a fan in a much smaller pipe, windy conditions outside are far less likely to impact indoor air quality.

 

An air quality sensor can tell you how bad your indoor air gets when you reload – and crucially – how long it takes to get back to normal. Once you start measuring it, it gives you a metric which can lead to behavior change.

 

With both wood and pellet stoves, improper installation can aggravate or cause leakage of smoke. With pellet stoves, the exhaust pipe has positive pressure and can leak if it's not sealed or installed properly.  With wood stoves, a short exhaust pipe which can often be found in trailers, and self-installed stoves, can lack the suction needed to keep smoke from spilling out into the room.

 

Did I need the sensor to help me understand the relationship between cleaning my firepot better and start-up smoke?  Not necessarily, but it gave me data to measure it on a daily basis, better understanding the solution, and it gave my whole family some reassurance that the stove did not cause much of a problem at all compared to cooking. 

 

How much smoke is acceptable?

It is easy to say that no additional indoor PM is acceptable yet we all live with it when we cook, toast bread and vacuum floors and rugs.  The EPA and the World Health Organization(WHO) say that indoor 24-hour averages should be below 12 – 15 ug/m3, or more recently down to 9 ug/m3. My house, with cooking meals for 3 people and running a pellet stove from 6:30 AM to 10 PM, almost always stayed well under those average limits. However, in homes were a wood stove were to result in daily averages of 20 or more, that would likely be unacceptable to many people, as I think it should be.  Learning when and how to reload your stove quickly and efficiently may help.

 

In terms of outdoor, ambient wood smoke, we know that concentrations of wood stoves in valleys, especially those with more frequent and severe inversions can pose serious health risks.  I have come to believe that restrictions on the new installation of cord wood stoves in those areas is often a step in the right direction.  Wood stoves are not a good energy solution in any densely populated area, not because they are usually not operated well-enough with dry enough fuel. However, we think pellet stoves can be a far greater energy solution than they are today, and should be allowed to be installed even in areas where cord wood stoves aren’t.

 

The toughest question is how to compare and contrast the additional local PM from wood or pellet stoves and the disastrous global impact that oil and gas heating have.  All renewables are increasingly getting local pushback even in the face of overwhelming data showing we need to ramp up renewables far faster than we have been.

 

What do the academic studies say?

There have been multiple academic studies of indoor PM impact of cord wood stoves but we could not find any about pellet stoves. For wood stoves,  one study found an average of 20% higher PM in homes with wood stoves. Another said that wood stoves triple the PM in a homes. Another found that the age of the wood stove was not a determinant of indoor air pollution but more frequent cleaning of the flue was a factor. This was the same conclusion of a well-known study in British Columbia that found there was not a consistent relationship between stove technology and outdoor or indoor concentrations of PM_2.5. Yet another studyfound higher PM in homes with wood stoves and the primary mechanism for introducing PM into the home was opening the door to the stove.

 

Do air purifiers work for wood smoke?

Yes, air purifiers can be effective for indoor smoke from forest fires, your neighbor’s wood stove, or your own wood stove. AGH began promoting the use of air purifiers in 2015 and since then, the rise of wildfire smoke have made them a commonplace solution.  But if the problem is your own wood stove, you should fix the problem before putting a band-aid on the symptom of the problem.  One of the highest rated air purifiers is  Blueair Blue Pure 211i Max(around $279) or Blueair Blue Pure 211+ (around $169).  Both consistently perform nearly as well or better than more expensive ones. One downside for all air purifiers is the cost of replacement filters ($25 - $35 for Blueair filters) which should be replaced once or twice a year depending on how much you use it and how dirty your air is.

 

Purple Air Sensors

I have used multiple Purple Air sensors extensively but did not include any of the data here in part because they are far more complicated to set up and can be glitchy. They are highly recommended, however, for a wide variety of ambient PM measuring. Data from ours led us to the same conclusion: the pellet stove caused a spike in PM when it started, but air quality returned to the same levels as when the stove was off pretty quickly.  With the Purple Air, we also confirmed that by far the worst events in the house were cooking, not starting or operating the pellet stove. 

In 2019, I set up both indoor and outdoor Purple Air sensors at my house, and my neighbors’ who had a cord wood stove. Sensors with a circle around them are indoor. The data was made public, and of interest to the Purple Air community. 

 

Here the Purple Air sensor at the bottom, mostly in green was indoor and the upper one, mostly in yellow was outdoor. Thus, the 7 PM spike from cooking did not impact outdoor PM, but the stove lighting around 8 AM caused a spike indoor and outdoor. (This is data from 2 units but each unit is a combination of two sensors, and you can see how closely they track each other.) 

 

Use of Govee and Amazon sensors outdoors

The Govee and Amazon sensors are indoor sensors but I was curious to see if they could detect start up smoke of my pellet stove when placed on my front porch, about 25 feet and around a corner from my pellet stove exhaust pipe.  I brought both sensors outside and turned my stove off at 11 AM and turned back on at 4 PM.  The result indicates that outdoor emissions of this pellet stove start-up were not detectable at 25 feet away on a relatively windless day

 

This shows that both the Amazon and Govee monitors did not detect elevated PM2.5 during a pellet stove start-up cycle a 4:00 on Feb. 21 when placed about 25 feet from the pellet stove exhaust pipe. If the sensors were placed directly under the exhaust pipe, the results would be very different, as there is always a strong smell of smoke there.

 

Conclusion

We found that our pellet stove does not significantly impact air quality in our home compared to other daily activities such as cooking and cleaning.  The pellet stove does emit some PM on start-up, but on a daily or hourly average basis, it was usually still well within EPA and WHO recommended limits.

 

If you regularly smell wood smoke in your home, you have a problem and you should not delay in trying to fix it.  A low-cost air sensor can be an excellent way to assess the problem with reliable data, or let you know that you don’t really have much of a problem at all compared to other daily household events like cooking and cleaning. 

If you have a pellet stove that emits some smoke on start-up, or if you have done any air quality monitoring in your house with a wood or pellet stove, please contact us and share you experience.

 

 

Trends in pellet heating in Europe in 2021

Excerpts of a statistical report from Bioenergy Europe and the European Pellet Council

This pellet statistical report is produced by Bioenergy Europe, a “non-profit, Brussels-based international organisation bringing together 41 associations and 122 companies, as well as academia and research institutes from across Europe.”  We find it extremely valuable and timely, in part because it shows the extensive use of domestic and imported pellets for residential and institutional heating.   

 

News coverage in North America almost exclusively focuses on the industrial pellets exported for electric generation, primarily in UK.  This report shows a much broader and more diverse pellet market that also relies on premium heating pellets, which are made by plants using far more residuals than the plants operated by companies such as Enviva which are now relying extensively on whole logs.

AGH calls on the scientific community, environmental groups, policy makers and the media to look at the end use of pellets, and the highly variable carbon impact of using pellets at 80% efficiency, compared to 35% efficiency.

Bioenergy Europe released parts of their report to the general public, which can be downloaded here where many of the sections are blurred. We only excerpted portions of this report below that deal with pellets used for heating.

Forward (excerpts)

The sales of residential pellets heating appliances showed very encouraging trends in countries like Germany, France and Austria, proving that, when the governments actively invest in phasing out fossil fuels, pellet systems directly appear as a credible, affordable and sustainable solution. In 2021 we have been recording even more encouraging sales in those countries. 

First, the 2020- 2021 heating season lasted much longer than usual, which, together with homeworking requirements in many countries, led to an increased pellet use in the residential market. Secondly, this long heating season, coupled with high electricity prices, encouraged many industrial operators to use more pellets than usual. … it is incredibly impressive to see how pellet prices compare to fossil fuel prices, which are currently hitting historical record highs. Together with increasing appliance sales, this shows again how bioenergy can help to fight energy poverty in Europe. 

 

World pellet consumption (excerpts)

In North America, the use of pellet has not witnessed a dramatic growth in the recent years despite different initiatives to grow the market both in US and Canada. Still, a niche market is consolidating its expansion: the pellet barbecues. The increasing sales of these barbecues lead to increasing sales of high margin pellets (e.g. 3 producers of 10.000 tonnes in Canada). 

In South America, the use of pellet, mostly for residential and mid-scale heat production, is expected to grow in the future 

European pellet consumption for heating 

The annual increase of the pellet demand in the residential/commercial sector was smaller in 2020 than in 2019: +3,8% in 2020 (vs 2019) and +5% in 2019 (vs 2018). It can be explained by the fact that 2018 has benefited from fairly good heating seasons while 2019 was deeply impacted by the low 2019-2020 heating season and a low start of 2020-2021 heating season. Furthermore, the not so strong increase in sales of heating appliances did not compensate for this low demand. Despite this, France and Serbia are highlighted as growing examples, as they have both registered the biggest increase (in absolute terms) in residential/commercial pellet consumption. 

Still, in 2020, the residential and commercial consumption increased together by 152.339 tonnes. Commercial pellet demand decreased in 2020 (-4%) while the residential showed a weak growth (+2%) and in absolute terms: + 289.686 tonnes for residential use and -137.287 tonnes for commercial use. 

 Heating degree days (HDD) is used as a proxy to estimate the heating energy needs - the higher the HDD for a season, the higher the need for heating. Therefore, we can see that the heating season of 2012-2013 was generally characterised by colder temperatures (i.e. higher HDD), creating some disruption on the pellet market that was not fully prepared, leading to market tensions and even small shortages. For this reason, pellet market players then tried to organise themselves to prevent this situation from repeating itself by increasing their production and stock. Unfortunately, from 2013 to 2016, Europe experienced three consecutive mild winters, leading to a rather disappointing growth of pellet consumption in the heat market inducing the accumulation of pellet stock in some regions. Thankfully, the following heating seasons were colder, resulting in better pellet use for heat showing a growth of around 12% over the 2016- 2017 period. 

This sudden rise in consumption generated again some tensions in the supply leading to shortage in some areas and generating a price increase in 2018. The heating season of 2018-2019 was slightly milder than the previous ones but only marginally colder than the ones from 2013 to 2016, leading to a modest growth of the pellet consumption for heating. The 2019-2020 season followed the same pattern as the previous season and a reduction in consumption also appeared. The 2020-2021 season started very similarly to the previous but then lasted for much longer. Indeed, in many areas, the energy demand was still rather high in March and April, which unexpectedly supported the pellet demand, allowing most of the market players to empty their stock. 

Residential Pellet Consumption

European stove market 

[The full report contains a para on each country, but the following 3 countries were the only ones included in the public facing report. - Ed]

Portugal: The installation of pellet boilers and stoves reached a peak in the winter of 2019-2020. The producers consider that, in the upcoming years, the number of installations will be steady with tendency to decrease in 2025 due to the competition with heat pumps. 

Serbia: A huge increase of pellet stoves and boilers is the result of a huge number of schools (over 200), kindergartens, health care centres and other public and commercial buildings that have switched from coal and heating to pellets. Since 2019, the government of Serbia has supported a vast number of public buildings in replacing heating oil and coal with wood pellets leading to sales increase. 

Spain: The market trends in 2020 were worse than in 2019 with a 16% decrease in the annual sales of pellets stoves. During the pandemic, the installations of stoves have been impacted due to the limited availability of installers, while sales greatly recovered in the second part of the year. 2021 should be rather similar while 2022 and beyond should be more favorable as Renewable Energies supports, and recovery funds will be put into place. 

European residential boiler market

Further reading:

Residential wood heating in Russia, Aug. 2021

Tall wood stoves: an elegant tradition lives on in Europe, Aug. 2020

Stove Eco-labels: US needs to follow Europe, Dec. 2018

Danish stove industry looks to compete, grow in America, June 2019

Photo essay: Wood heating stoves from around the world, Oct. 2014

An open letter to Mayors of Comox, Cumberland and Courtney about wood smoke

Dear Mayors Arnott, Baird and Wells,

As representatives of a pro-wood heating non-profit, the Alliance for Green Heat, we are writing to express concerns about information in the “Overturn the Ban” website.

We want you to know that there are many members of the hearth industry that support reasonable, health-based restrictions on wood stoves. We understand that the primary restriction in your towns are disallowing new installs of wood stoves, which is an imperfect, but reasonable strategy. Allowing or even requiring homes with existing stoves to upgrade to a new one and destroy the old one, is also reasonable. However, we do urge towns and cities not to restrict or ban the new installation of pellet stoves, as they burn consistently cleanly, something the Overturn the Ban site omits to mention. We also urge jurisdictions not to restrict or ban masonry heaters because they are typically very clean and efficient, though very expensive.

All renewables have limitations, and in communities with frequent inversions, wood stove installation and usage often need to be limited. Wood and pellet heaters have an important role to play in providing renewable energy in North America, but that does not mean they are well-suited for every community.  They are usually least well-suited in densely inhabited urban centers, but even in rural areas that experience frequent inversions, reasonable restrictions make sense.

The adjoining towns of Comox,
Cumberland and Courtney are at the  
center of this map on Vancouver
Island, British Columbia.

One troubling half-truth promoted by the website is that new wood stoves operate far more cleanly than old ones.  Any wood stove that is loaded with wet wood and/or not given enough air is more likely smolder  and thereby smoke terribly and easily emit 25 grams of PM2.5 per hour. Some estimates say that up to 50% of stove users do not use seasoned wood. An operator of a brand-new stove causing it to produce high emissions is unfortunately not a rare occurrence.  If an old and a new wood stove get the same dry wood or even semi dry wood, the new one will almost always burn cleaner.  However, that stove can still emit 5 grams an hour of PM or more, which is excessive during an inversion. 

 

New EPA regulations require that stoves not emit more than 2.5 grams an hour in a very controlled lab setting and in the hands of trained experts.  The EPA standard is not an estimate of emissions produced by homeowners, who may rarely achieve an average of 2.5 grams an hour. With pellet stoves, the emissions measured in the lab are consistent with the emissions in consumers' homes because the fuel is consistently dry and uniform, and the combustion chamber is automated.  

 

Masonry stoves tend to be consistently clean not just because of their design, which makes the fuel burn hot and fast, but also because of the culture of users of this niche technology. Their main distinguishing feature is the ability to store the heat from a short hot fire for slow release over a daily heating cycle. Seasoned cordwood burned this way has been demonstrated in real world testing to have PM2.5 emissions in the same range as pellet stoves

 

You should also know that most wood stove companies had a very good sales year in 2020, despite what they feared when Covid-19 began.  And, in the US Congress just passed a 26% tax credit for the most efficient stoves, so sales in the US by all the major manufacturers will be bolstered for the next three years.  

 

Possibly the top consumer education website on wood heat in North America is a Canadian one, Woodheat.org.  It wisely begins by saying, “wood heating can be done badly or well. Firewood can be harvested poorly, burned dirty and its heat wasted.”  Wood heating is done well depending on three things: a good stove, an experienced and attentive operator and seasoned wood.  

 

Please let us know if you have any questions and know that many of us who burn wood and pellets are responsible environmentalists.

 

Sincerely,

 

John Ackerly,

President

Maryland, US

 

Norbert Senf

Chairman of the Board

Quebec, Canada

How to claim the $300 stove tax credit

Updated on Jan. 6, 2020 - Legislation just became law that provides a 26% tax credit for wood heaters, and ends the traditional $300 credit. Qualifying stoves purchased in 2020 can still receive the $300 tax credit by filling out IRS Form 5695.  Form 5695 will also used in 2022 to file 2021 taxes, where taxpayers can take the 26% credit if they purchased an eligible heater. 

Taxpayers purchasing eligible stoves in 2020 can still take the $300 tax credit on their 2020 taxes. To be eligible for the $300 tax credit, stoves or boilers need to have a 75% "thermal efficiency rating" or greater and be purchased in 2018, 2019 or 2020.

To claim the credit for 2019 and 2020 complete IRS Form 5695 when you file your taxes.  Wood and pellet heaters are covered under Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit on line 22A.  Do not include more than $300 on line 22A.  According to the IRS, your stove must have "a thermal efficiency rating of at least 75%" to take the $300 credit.  Any thermal efficiency ratings less than that would enter "0" on line 22A, and the taxpayer may not need to file Form 5695 at all unless they installed other eligible energy efficiency property in 2019.  Instructions for Form 5695, with other important qualifications, are here.  Online service such as Turbotax and Intuit have Form 5695 integrated into their software.

Taxpayers do not have submit receipts with their taxes but need to maintain receipts in their files. The EPA database provides verification of whether a stove is 75% efficient and is the only reliable place for consumers to determine efficiency numbers. If the EPA database provides an efficiency of less than 75% for a particular stove, it may not be eligible for the tax credit.

The EPA database is easily searchable
to find efficiency and emission ratings.

Unfortunately, many manufacturers are issuing certificates of eligibility for stoves that are far less than 75% efficient. For IRS purposes, consumers are allowed to rely on the manufacturers certificate, even if the stove is listed far below 75%.  However, if you want a higher efficiency stove, which is particularly important if you are in the market for a pellet stoves, first refer to the EPA database.

One retailer inaccurately advertised that "because this [64% efficient] model was EPA approved, it qualifies for the tax credit." Major manufacturers such as Drolet, Enviro, Harman, Jotul, Quadrafire, all claim stoves far below 75% (LHV or HHV) are eligible. V.P Berger, the President of Hearth & Home Technologies (HHT) that owns Harman and Quadrafire signed a manufacturers certificate claiming the Harman XXV pellet stove, at 66% efficiency and the Quadrafire Classic Bay pelet stove at 64% efficient were eligible.  Mr. Berger and others at HHT did not respond to calls or emails.   Even one pellet stove that is listed at 59% efficient is claimed to be eligible. 

If the IRS determines that a manufacturer's certificate is erroneous, the IRS can "withdraw a manufacturer’s right to provide a certification on which future purchasers of the component or property may rely, and taxpayers purchasing the component or property after the date on which the Service publishes an announcement of the withdrawal may not rely on the manufacturer’s certification.”  

These 2020 manufacturer certificates

all claim stoves under 67% efficiency

are eligible for the IRS tax credit and

are signed under penalty of perjury.

Two companies, U.S. Stove and England Stove Works, that dominate the market for lower cost and often lower efficiency stoves, stopped issuing certificates of eligibity for any of their stoves as of 2020.  If they had adopted the questionable and unexplained efficiency calculations of many of the big name brand manufacturers, they could have allowed thousands of consumers to claim the credit on their lines of stoves.  Both U.S. Stove and England Stove Works have eligible stoves that are over 75% efficiency (HHV), with England Stove Works getting three of their 2020 compliant pellet stoves between 76 and 79% efficiency, higher than the pellet stove efficiencies of bigger name brand stoves.

The Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association (HPBA) would not take a position on loopholes used by manufacturers to qualify stoves that are in the low to mid 60s efficiency range.  AGH urged HPBA to advise manufacturers not to mislead consumers or the IRS.

There is a $500 limit is a lifetime limit for all energy efficiency property, including insulation, doors, windows or other wood or pellet stoves. So, if a taxpayer has claimed $300 in previous years, for example, they may only be able to claim $200 on their taxes for a qualifying stove.  The tax credit also applies to wood and pellet boilers and furnaces.   

Other heating and cooling equipment had far stricter qualification standards to ensure that consumers got a tax credit for a genuinely more efficient appliance or item.  

The 2014 tax break cost taxpayers about $42 billion.  The tax credit for stoves alone is not likely to cost more than $50 million and that’s if a majority of people who bought stoves learn about the credit and take it on their tax return.