• Burning wood can add warmth and charm to your home.fireplace image by Horticulture from Fotolia.com
  
  Wood burning stoves, furnaces and fireplaces can be a lot of work to keep them functioning properly. Proper maintenance and use will help ensure safety for your health and home. If you do not keep it properly maintained you could cause carbon monoxide leaks or chimney fires that could be deadly. To protect yourself, your family and your home make sure your home is equipped with fire and carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers.
  
  

Proper Wood to Burn

• Burning the proper wood can minimize the amount of smoke that is produced. Choose wood that is dry and well seasoned, which means no green or wet wood. Also be careful that your wood does not mold. If you store wet wood inside it can increase the humidity cause mold to grow, which can be cause health issues, such as allergies or asthma, according to the British Columbia Lung Association.
  
  

Dampers

• Dampers should be used to improve air circulation and help the wood burn more efficiently. If there is smoke you are choking the fire and the wood is not burning completely. You should never dampen a fire overnight because it causes excess emissions and helps creosote build up in your chimney and stove.
  
  

Size

• Small hot fires are more efficient than larger fires. Make sure you wood is cut into logs with lots of surface area, approximately four to six inches in diameter, burn best. If you are using well seasoned wood it will burn hot and with less smoke than wet wood. The more wet the wood is the more smoke is produced because the wood will not be able to reach a high enough temperature to burn efficiently.
  
  

EPA Certified Wood Stoves

• If you are using seasoned dry wood and building small hot fires but still want more efficient and clean fires you may want to invest in an EPA certified wood burning stove. EPA certified stoves claim to heat more efficiently because they burn more of the combustible gases than normal stoves. Therefore also causing less emissions to pollute the environment. There are two types of EPA certified stoves; Catalyst stoves and Non-Catalyst stoves. Catalyst stoves burn between 500 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit and have complete smoke combustion. Catalyst stove efficiency does decline after time and you will need to replace the catalyst device between three and seven years of use. Non-catalyst stoves can attain up to four stages of combustion, which completely burns the wood smoke before it escapes, accord to the Air Resources Board.