Tall wood stoves: an elegant tradition lives on, mostly in Europe

Tall stoves evolved in Europe partly because smaller homes and apartments had little space. Tall stoves also offer space for thermal storage, which is also more needed if your wood supply mainly consists of smaller diameter logs. 

Vertical fireboxes are still the norm in Europe but they rarely reach the heights they used to, except as masonry heaters. Today, the vertical European firebox style typically accommodates shorter and smaller pieces of wood, good for a evening fire, but not to hold heat overnight.  

The abundance of cheap wood in America led to less of a priority on thermal storage.  Instead of using less wood, and capturing more of the heat, Americans were able to design stoves that held logs big enough to slowly burn overnight in horizontal burn chambers.  

More vertically oriented stoves were common in America in the 1800 and 1900s in the iconic potbelly stoves, designed as much for coal as for wood.  All sorts of “parlour” stoves also had vertical shapes, designed as heat exchangers so that heat would be transferred to the room before going too quickly up the stack.  The poor man’s heat exchange used to be longer single walled pipe that would snake vertically and then horizontally through a room, often collecting and dripping creosote before exiting the room. 

Visit our other international photo essays on firewood collection and stacking, wood fired hot tubs, tiny stoves for  tiny homes boats & RVs, and typical wood stoves from countries around the world.

The original tall masonry stoves may have emerged in central and Eastern Europe in the 1600s but were rarely this ornate.  These would represent heaters built and used by very wealthy families but the inside design and operation was common in middle class families as well.  See more photos and histories on this site. 

Tiled masonry heaters like this emerged in the 1800s and were common in the 1900s.  They had cast iron and then steel doors, clean out caps, warming ovens and were site built to go as high as they could. 

In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of these hold masonry heaters were destroyed as fossil fuel became cheap and widely available.  And, despite their design to burn hotter and faster than modern steel stoves, as populations increased and cities and towns became larger all over Europe, they began to pose significant pollution problems.

Howell Harris, perhaps the world’s leading historian on wood stoves discusses the demand for very tall stoves, emphasizing their use in non-residential settings, “including "Halls, Nurseries, Nurseries, Churches, Public Offices, Stores, Counting and Green Houses, Work Shops, Steam Boats and Ships' cabins, &c. &c." and also of the shared interest of the inventor and his customers in maximizing heat output and fuel economy.   His site has as much or more detail than anyone could hope for along with scores of high-quality photos.

Many of these elegant, tall stoves, made either of cast iron or tile, were designed for coal, but could also use wood.

While stoves like this are available on the North American market they are almost all imported from Europe and remain far more popular there.

The Victorian Age is reflected in the designs and names of parlor stoves. These stoves simulate the architecture of castles, Gothic churches, and Italian villas. They are also lavish and intricate in design. Made at the height of cast iron technology, such stoves display some of the finest examples of casting known today.  Antiquestoves.com has many more examples. 

The evolution of Danish Morso stove designs from 1854 to 2008. around the turn of the century, when Morsø began to produce and provide tiled stoves and heaters to schools, churches, the railways, ministries and not least to the royal household. This put Morsø seriously on the map, and in 1915 Morsø received the coveted title of Purveyor to the Royal Court. In the 1950’s, the tiled stoves were replaced by central heating, but opened but opened space for wood-burning stoves in which you can see the flames,

HPBA gets delay in lawsuit to give Trump Administration time to review

President Trump shaking hands with
his EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, a
prominent climate change skeptic.

The Hearth Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA) moved to delay its lawsuit to allow the Trump administration time to review the settlement proposals that HPBA submitted in 2015 and 2016 and re-evaluate whether some issues can be settled out of court, according to its court filing.  The EPA and the environmental groups who intervened did not oppose the delay. They filed their motion with the US Court of Appeals weeks before they would have had to meet the first filing deadline.

The original suit was consolidated to include challenges from HPBA, the Pellet Fuel Institute (FPI), Tulikivi and Richard Burns and Company. In November 2016, the EPA informed HPBA that it would not continue in settlement talks, but they did reach an amicable settlement with Tulikivi, a masonry heater company that wanted masonry heaters to be a regulated technology under the NSPS. The EPA is seeking additional information with regard to PFI’s lawsuit.

On March 16, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals approved the 90-day delay sought by HPBA and set a new briefing schedule for the parties that plays out through the end of 2017. HPBA must file its brief with the Court on June 26, laying out a final list of issues it intends to litigate. After that, the EPA will respond with its positions on September 26, revealing how it will defend those portions of the regulations.

Less than a month later, the interveners must file their briefs. Interveners include the American Lung Association, Clean Air Council, and the Environment and Human Health, Inc. They are represented by Timothy Ballo of Earthjustice.

HPBA is simultaneously moving a bill in Congress to delay the 2020 provisions of the NSPS by 3 years, which in turn will give the legal proceedings time to play out. Another bill would erase the wood heater NSPS altogether. HPBA does not support this, but some individual boiler and pellet producers support it.

“The Trump Administration is a wild card for all parties in the lawsuit and the Alliance for Green Heat urges all parties to support the core provisions of the NSPS,” said John Ackerly of the Alliance for Green Heat. “For the future of wood heating in the US, we need to protect the transition to cord wood testing and adopt affordable test methods that reflect how consumers use stoves,” Ackerly added.

A blog “Hearth industry lists grounds for lawsuit against EPA” by the Alliance for Green Heat in 2015 laid out more details of the substance and process of the lawsuit. One often overlooked point is that HPBA does not appear to be challenging the 2020 emission standards for wood or pellet stoves, but only for outdoor wood boilers and warm air furnaces.

Petitioners' Brief(s)                               June 26, 2017

Respondent's Brief                                September 26, 2017

Intervenor for Respondent's Brief   October 18, 2017

Petitioners' Reply Brief(s)                  November 8, 2017

Deferred Appendix                               November 15, 2017

Final Briefs                                             November 22, 2017

Meet the Contestants; Hiisi

With the first Wood Stove Decathlon only a couple weeks away, we are profiling the remaining teams in the competition. Take this opportunity to learn more about the design teams and their stove’s innovative features.

“It’s so Hiisi, anyone can do it!” The Finnish stove is marketed as easy to use, inspiring the homonymic name Hiisi. The Hiisi is Finnish company’s Tulikivi's smallest hybrid heat-retaining fireplace and is especially well suited to modern low energy construction projects. The upcoming 2015 wood emissions restrictions in Germany has challenged Tulikivi engineers and innovators to meet the high standards. After years of development the stove is ready meet the world's tightest emissions standards set for 2015 and to compete in the Wood Stove Decathlon this November.

Lab technician Onni Ovaskainen and a Hiisi prototype

The Hiisi differs from standard room-heating stoves in that typical wood stoves are not normally heat-retaining units. The Hiisi's heat-retaining soapstone releases heat more slowly, and in the form of soft, pleasant radiant heat and it can heat water. This is a major design point since this stove won't over heat new energy efficient homes. These types of homes are quickly becoming the norm so Tulikivi has worked to minimize the convection heat into the room using thermal radiation and a double glass door. Despite its compact size, the Hiisi is a hybrid fireplace, meaning that both pellets and wood can be burned in their firebox without the need for any further equipment, accessories or even electricity.

The model that Tulikivi is bringing to Washington D.C. has already been sold in Europe for the past 5 months. Only taking a brief pause to celebrate Hiisi’s success, Tulikivi is getting ready to launch the next generation of Hiisi models this coming January. The new model promises to burn even cleaner than the original.

Tulikivi hopes that their Hiisi stove will help promote the benefits of residential biomass heating. They work hard to ensure that consumers are aware of these benefits. While selling these masonry heaters in the US, Tulikivi educates their consumers of the long tradition of masonry heating and the pros and cons of thermal mass radiant heat compared to dry hot convection heat. Over the past two years, insight from consumers and Tulikivi’s importer network has led to developmental and design changes to get the look and feel of the Hiisi just right.

We are looking forward to seeing Hiisi in action at the Wood Stove Decathlon November 16-19, 2013. Vote for your favorite stove at Popular Mechanics.