The cold weather will have many homes using stoves and fires to heat their rooms to a comfortable temperature. Which of these would you choose and why?
An open fire is a welcome sight when you come into a cozy home from the cold winter weather outside and can easily remedy the numbness from your fingers, toes, nose, and ears. A warm stove will also do this, but you have to get close to it and give it a little time. Open fires are quite easy to light up and need just a stack of wood and a taper to light it up. Wood burning stoves need to behave the wood carefully stacked in small cast iron casing and coaxed to catch fire. This is often an art that a homeowner needs to learn and can vary from stove to stove.
Wood burning stoves are smaller in size than a traditional open fireplace and do not have the attraction that an open fire has. Open fires act as an attraction for the members of the family, as well as any visitors, and exude a feeling of warmth and togetherness when people crowd around it. When you compare stoves and fires on their use for fuel, most of the heat from a fire goes up the chimney and only about 20 percent is available for heating a room. Stoves will recirculate the combustible particles so that higher temperatures are created, and this will result in the heat that is being produced is four times greater than if the same wood is burnt in a fire.
The heat from fires heat up only the area around it, and that is why people always gather closer to fires. Stoves on the other hand radiate the high temperatures in them to much larger areas. Fires can spray sparks or hot coals onto the area around them, something that stoves will never do, leading to a danger of fire. Stoves also produce much lesser smoke than fires will do. It is also very easy to use stoves for cooking, though this can also be done on fires using other arrangements. Care has to be taken when stirring pots or placing them on an open fire, a problem that you will not have with stoves.
Open fires never go unnoticed in the room and have a welcome that stoves can never get close to. They, open fires, draw people together, and create a relaxing atmosphere that is hard to beat.