Folks are not really shopping for efficiency anymore but it seems to be the very first thing that they ask for. The definition for efficiency is not what the customer expects. Efficiency is the amount of carbon particulate per million that is vented out from the stove from the wood burning process to the outside.

Non-Catalytic technology usually has a primary and secondary air inlet to provide oxygen to the combustion chamber of the stove to burn the wood hot enough to meet efficiency standards by the EPA. This means that almost all stoves have to burn very hot to burn wood efficiently with minimal particulate emission.

Stoves are designed in a manner to burn wood efficiently by design. This means that if you put wood into a stove it is expected that you will burn that wood efficiently. In order to do this the manufacturer has designed the stove to accept air into the firebox chamber at a designed and engineered rate to burn a variety of common wood to EPA efficiency standards. The controls on the appliance have to be manufactured in a way that neither the Dealer nor the Consumer can easily manipulate airflow design in order to slow down the fire or increase the fire.

Some control has been given on the primary air intake to provide a range for air adjustment for the various wood consistencies that are normally encountered. The controls do not have an off position. The primary control will provide about a 10% +/- adjustment to the total burning performance of the stove.

In all Non-Catalytic cases the larger the stove the more wood that can be placed into that stove so an old standard called “Burn Time” is increased. The wood in a smaller stove will burn very closely to that in a bigger stove. But because you cannot put in as much wood in a smaller stove you have less burning time. So by default purchasing a larger stove and putting less wood into it will do the same as a smaller stove given the same wood/fuel amount. The benefit of the larger stove is obviously more heat.