Big or small stove?
Are you trying to choose between one large wood stove and two smaller ones? Usually one large one works better. It takes larger chunks of wood, can burn longer fires and cuts maintenance and cleaning time in half. In some cases, though, such as in a ranch-style house, two stoves are necessary because the heat from one won’t circulate throughout the house.
On the other hand, don’t go overboard and get a stove that’s too big for the space you’re heating. If the stove is too large, it won’t have the opportunity to burn at a high enough combustion rate, and creosote will collect in the chimney. A smaller stove operating at a higher burn rate will provide better efficiency. Choose the smallest single stove that can adequately heat the space.

Backup heat
If you burn wood and need automatic heat backup when you’re away, have a heating contractor take a hot-water loop off your domestic hot-Water heater and run it through a fancoil unit mounted on or in your living room wall. It won’t heat the whole house, but it will help keep the temperature up until you get back home.

The slow burn
If you’re using a new cast-iron stove, light only small fires for the first week or two to season the metal and reduce the risk of cracking the cast iron.
It’s a good idea to line the bottom of a wood-burning stove with an inch or two of sand or ashes. That will reduce the heat reaching the stove bottom and extend its life.
If you’re building a fire that you want to last all night, it pays to know that one large log will last two to three times longer than the same volume of smaller logs.
If you want a long-lasting fire, carefully choose the wood you’re going to burn. The best woods for this purpose include hornbeam, hickory, white oak, rock elm and apple.

Save energy, money and space: clothes drying
For a cheap, energy-efficient way to dry clothes, place drying racks near the wood stove or wood furnace. (Don’t place them too near, though; you want to dry the clothes, not burn them.) To save space, hang the rack overhead and attach a rope and pulley. That will allow you to lift the rack out of the way after you’ve hung clothes on it. If you have a grate for heating upstairs rooms, place a rack near the grate, too.

Keep your stove in shape
To increase efficiency, seal the joints in old cast-iron stoves once a year. You can make stove cement inexpensively by mixing 2 parts wood ashes and l part table salt, then adding just enough water to make a thick paste. With a putty knife or trowel, apply this mixture to the seams inside the stove. (Newer stoves are still manufactured in sections but are less likely to have problems with cracking seams.)
Before repainting a wood stove, go over it lightly with a wire brush. Then dust the stove with a rag moistened with paint thinner; this removes any dust without creating rust. When it’s dry, spray-paint the stove with enamel stove paint, which is made to withstand high temperatures. The paint is available from wood stove and hardware stores.
As an alternative to repainting a wood stove, you can restore it with traditional stove black applied with a rag. Stove black is available from wood stove and hardware stores.
Before storing a stove for any length of time, wipe it with kerosene to prevent rust from forming. Be sure to store the stove in a dry place.

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