Open fires allows heat to travel into the room.
How do Wood stoves work as they are closed? Doesn’t the heat just go up?
In: Physics
Had a wood burner growing up. It had a blower halfway up the pipe to take advantage of the heat rising and blow it into the room. Worked very well.
An open flame has tons of access to oxygen, so it burns through the fuel quickly. A closed flame burns slower, and with less smoke. Yes, a lot of the heat goes out the chimney, but it’s not as much as you think. There is so much heat available that everything is warmed. Also, the metal of the stove stores up a lot of heat and radiates it out slowly.
Three basic types of heat transfer are: Radiant, conduction, convection.
Open fires heat mainly by radiant heat, meaning heat is given off in the surrounding area of the flame. (Convection heat transfer, too, which is direct or near direct flame impingement and/or above of the flame, but you’d have to stick your hand in or above the flame to feel the heat)
Wood stoves use all three types of heat transfer, especially conduction. They are mainly made of iron which very adaptive to heat transfer to heat the air and nearby objects in a space, like a room.
This photo shows the three, so just imagine the fire poking rod is the entire wood stove heating up…. https://maxinsulation.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Heat-Transfer.jpg
So, wood stoves are highly more efficient for amount of wood burned.
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