When it comes to installing alternative energy in your home, for most people some of the options available are simply not very practical and also far too expensive.  Adding a wind-turbine or solar panels to your roof could mean having to take out a second mortgage to cover the cost, and with the energy saving payback-time could run into several decades. 

For an economical and practical solution to meeting at least some of your home?s energy needs you should get back to basics and make serious considerations for wood fuelled heating.  Wood sourced from a re-newable and correctly managed source can be considered to be 100% carbon neutral. Wood differs from fossil fuels such as coal, gas or oil because it is part of the carbon/carbon neutral cycle. Although the fuels produce CO2, trees absorb CO2 and store it as carbon which makes up half the weight of the tree.  When the wood is burned it releases only the same amount back into the atmosphere, exactly the same as if the tree was left to rot.

You can pick-up a really efficient stove (that will run at about 80% efficiency) fo around ?1000 and are probably looking at up to the same again for installation costs, but cost savings can be seen within a couple of years.

In the UK many towns and cities are classed as ?smokeless zones?.  This has meant that in the past, wood-burning was an exclusive pastime for country folk.  For those of us who lived in towns and cities if we wanted a real fire it had to be smokeless, meaning burning smokeless coal or coke - not very environmentally friendly.   Today many stoves now incorporation the latest clean-burn air-wash technologies, more of the volatile by-products burn, causing double combustion and reduced emissions.  This means is that many stove models are suitable for using in smokeless zoned towns and cities.  With the huge choice of traditional and contempory designs available, there really isn?t any excuse for not having a wood-burning stove whether you live in a cottage in the countryside or flat in the city.  For  a complete list of the stoves that are  authorised  for use in smoke control areas please take a look at  The Smoke Control Areas (Exempted Fireplaces) Order.

If you are still not convinced about wood, take a look at the National Energy Foundation?s wood fuel website. 

And now that you are convinced, the two wood-burning stove manufactures that set the standard in the UK are Charnwood and Clearview .

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