Buying Wood Stove Accessories For Heating With Wood

Heating with wood is a wonderful way to keep your house warm during the winter. Besides the obvious fact that you need a good cast iron or steel stove, you also need wood stove accessories.
Often some of these accessories get overlooked in the rush to buy a gas chain saw, learn about sharpening a chain saw, getting extra chain saw chains, and stacking a firewood cord or two or three.
Truly, heating with wood is an involved task, but an enjoyable one, if you are prepared. Not only that, but it is also a good way to involve the entire family in a meaningful project.
Once you get your stove home, you will need to have adequate stove pipe. Using the wrong gauge or diameter is not a good idea. It can be dangerous due to fire and smoke leakage. European stoves, such as the Jotul or Morso are metric and require either metric stove pipe or an adapter to fit English standards.
You also need some type of fireproof flooring underneath the stove. This can be home made or purchased. The simplest is a sheet of asbestos type material covered with sheet metal. A good hardware store will have several types of covering available.
You can also make your own, using bricks, stone, or driveway bricks. These are easy to work with and the entire project can easily be done in a morning. You can make it simple, or get creative and create a real work of art that accentuates the beauty and lines of your stove.
Depending on the location and type of your stove, you may need some kind of wall protection. This is obviously to prevent the wall from catching on fire, which does happen. A building supply store or hardware store also carries these. Usually it is a good idea to use some type of spacer between the fireproof board and the wall in order for air to circulate.
Next, make sure you have a metal ash bucket. Do not attempt to use some type of plastic pail, as this will burn when hot coals are dumped into it. I have seen many homes with such a pail used for ashes, complete with burn holes and melted spots on it. Insurance companies will not insure you house if you use such an ash pail, so I have been told.
You also need a small shovel with which to remove the ashes. There are always some hot coals in the ashes, so make sure you get one that is steel, not plastic. It also needs to be long enough to reach the back of your stove, otherwise you can get burns on your arms.
A kindling box is a great idea as well. If you do not use one, your floor will likely get pretty messy. This can range from a cardboard box, to a wooden box to a custom made box, just for kindling.
A poker of some sort is invaluable for moving burning logs around in the firebox. The ones made for fireplaces are fine, but an even better style is to take a stainless steel rod of 3/8 inch diameter and bend a loop at one end for a handle and bend the other end into an L shape. This will last a lifetime and works better than the store-bought ones.