The Back-to-Wood Boom

Americans are finding new romance in an old flame

As oil, natural gas and electricity bills savage their budgets, Americans in great numbers are discovering that there's no fuel like an old fuel. Specifically, wood. Not only is it in plentiful supply and an infinitely renewable resource;* it is relatively cheap--or, for those who are willing to chop their own, even free.

The back-to-wood movement has gone from a slow burn to a blaze in the past three years. Many of the leading manufacturers and importers of wood-burning stoves (prices range from $75 to $1,000 and up) report that they are sold out for months to come. Even so, an estimated 500,000 wood stoves--$150 million worth--will be installed in the U.S. this year alone. Riteway Manufacturing Co., of Harrisonburg, Va., one of the leading makers of wood-burning stoves, has doubled production in the past year, and is preparing to build a new plant. At the Whole Earth Access Store in Berkeley, one of the West Coast's biggest retailers, October stove sales were five times greater than last October's; in 1976 they sold $30,000 worth, five times more than in 1975. Roughly 10% of all households in Oregon have bought wood-burning stoves in just the past four years. Nationwide, sales of wood-fueled furnaces, boilers, hot-water heaters and kitchen ranges are also glowing. At the six-month-old Firebird store in Santa Fe, Owners Gene and Sharon Tison have already sold more than 100 stoves, from the $320 Fisher "Babybear" to the $730 Morso/.

Woodburners are proclaiming their passion with bumper stickers on gas guzzlers. One message: BURN WOOD. BE A SON OF A BIRCH. There is even a magazine for the hot-stove league: Wood Burning Quarterly and Home Energy Digest, which, after only 18 months, is in the black with a circulation of 30,000.

Economy is not the only consideration. Many woodburners point out that a log fire is virtually nonpolluting. They also speak with pride of a new-found self-sufficiency; regardless of Carter, Congress and OPEC, they know that their families will not freeze this winter.

Americans have traditionally luxuriated in the intimacy and fragrance of the open fireplace. However, it imparts more romance than B.T.U.s. Most fireplaces deliver only about 10% of the potential heat of the wood, draw in cold outside air and actually remove warmth from the house. As old Ben Franklin observed, "If you sit near the fire, you have that cold draft of uncomfortable air nipping your back and heels ... by which many catch cold, being scorched before, and, as it were, froze behind." Which is why he devised "the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place"--better-known as the Franklin stove--which, he boasted, made his room twice as warm with a quarter as much wood as a conventional hearth. Franklin never patented his promethean invention, wishing to share its back-to-front benefits with the world, and a variety of stoves modeled on his old reliable are manufactured in the U.S.

What the Franklin stove accomplished was a long, slow burn, achieved by limiting the amount of oxygen reaching the wood; it also trapped the heat inside the combustion chamber so that it radiated more evenly throughout the room. Modern stoves have become even more efficient through airtight construction, the use of baffles that pass the hot air back over the flame to improve combustion (and heat) and in some cases thermostats and blowers that circulate the warm air. Although some heat is thereby lost, in many stoves the doors can be temporarily folded back, leaving a clear view of the dancing flames--as in a fireplace. A compromise between the Franklin and the open hearth is a heat-efficient device called the Thermograte, a tubular convection unit that can be inserted in the fireplace, enclosed with a glass front and boosted with a blower.

Among the most popular--and decorative--burners on the market are the Scandinavian imports--heavy, cast-iron models. However, according to Wood 'N Energy, a newsletter published by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, U.S.-made circulating heaters are the variety most in demand, both because of the amount of heat they deliver and their ease of operation with thermostatic controls. International Troubadour Bill Crofut (he sings in 27 languages) has installed three American-made log burners in his Wilton, Conn., home. With a $425 Riteway Model 37, Steven and Mary Ahlgren have used nothing but wood for the past six years to heat their five-room, multilevel house in Sanbornton, N.H. During last winter's arctic siege they cut all their own wood--four cords. Says Mary: "Our heating bill is always a week of work, whether we cut the wood or work to make the money to buy it."

Outside major cities (where a cord of firewood can cost up to $90) good hardwood, such as ash, hickory, oak, hard maple, beech or black locust, can be had for little or nothing. Both national and state forests encourage homeowners to cut down and remove deadwood from specified areas, and many private owners encourage the same practice, since it helps clear the way for new growth. Geri Harrington, a lively Connecticut woman who has written an excellent new guide, The Wood-Burning Stove Book (Macmillan; $12.95), lists many other sources of free wood, such as utility companies, which constantly saw down limbs that endanger their lines, and town dumps and landfills, where fallen trees are taken after a big storm. As the oldtimers say, the wood "heats you twice"--once when you cut and split it, again when you burn it.

Experts differ on the actual efficiency of various models, but most good wood-burners deliver at least 60% of the fuel's potential in terms of heat--which is comparable to an oil burner. In terms of heating capacity, however, a cord of hardwood burned in a sound stove will deliver as much heat as 166 gal. of #2 fuel oil (Massachusetts price: about 48-c- per gal.), or 6,290 kilowatt hours of electricity (about $330 worth), or 264 therms of natural gas ($97). No wonder Americans are returning to their old flame.

* There are approximately 754 million acres of forest land in the U.S. today, 75% as much as when the first colonists arrived. From new growth alone, the forests can yield enough firewood--apart from other products--to provide all the heat for 75 million homes.

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