What is a chimney-free stove and why is no chimney needed?
As the name suggests, a chimney-free stove is a stove that does not require a chimney. Today, there are stoves that use bioethanol (alcohol) as fuel and other stoves that use gel. Both of these fuels emit no smoke, odor or soot. The stoves are available in several different designs and designs where some can be built into the wall, others can stand freely on, the floor and some that hang like a TV on the wall. The range of different types of designs is large where there are some stoves that have a modern look and others that have a more classic look. I can write about styles on chimney-free stoves for a whole day, but I intend to go further and tell you a little more in detail about how they work.
How a chimney-free stove works
A chimney-free stove is equipped with a body the very outer shape of the stove where an ethanol burner or gel burner is usually placed in the middle of the outer mold itself. The burners are not always the same size or have the same shape, some are rectangular and create an elongated fire while others are round and create a cylindrical fire. Filling the burner is generally simple and in most cases it is good to pour directly from the bottle (bioethanol) or called stove fuel. If you happen to spill a little, it is wise to take some paper or a cloth and wipe it up. To get the finest flames on a rectangular burner, we recommend that you try to fill it to 75% or more to get the nice yellow flames that we all want to see.
Now that we have come to the conclusion that you should light your chimney-free stove, we recommend that you use a long lighter or a steel stick that you dip in a little bioethanol to then light it, and then light the burner with the stick. You will get a fire directly like a grill with lighter fluid, but the flames will be a little blue for the first 5-10 minutes before the fire has come up in sufficient heat to then turn into more yellow flames. Now that you have started the fire, just enjoy it and take it easy at the dining table or sofa, but if you feel that it gets too hot in your home, you have the opportunity to adjust the lid on rectangular ethanol burners to adjust the height of the fire. The lid is placed on top of the burner and is used to extinguish the fire,
It is important to keep in mind when using a chimney-free stove is not to refuel when it burns or to refuel immediately after the fire has gone out, but you must wait until the burner has cooled down, which takes about 20 minutes. When the burner is cold, you can refill with new fuel and light the fire again. If you fill up an ethanol burner to 100%, you will get a fire in about 4 hours, may depend a bit on what fuel you use and what design your particular burner has.
How hot will it be with a chimney-free stove?
How hot it will be depends on the size of your burner, but we usually count on 2-3 kW for a burner of 1.5 liters and a burner that holds 3 liters of ethanol has a maximum power of about 4 -6 kW. The effect is a bit dependent on the design of the opening where some burners have a wider opening but hold only 2 liters of ethanol and so on. You will notice a difference in your room, but we do not recommend that you heat the whole room with a chimney-free stove. Normally, the temperature in the room where you place the burner increases by a few single degrees. So if it is 20 degrees in the room, maybe it will increase to 22 - 23 degrees.
Where can we use our stove?
It is possible to use the stove in public environments, outdoors, terraces, conservatories, apartments and houses. The guidelines we have are that the room should be larger than 25 sqm so that it is possible to use an ethanol stove at full strength without having to choke it. What you can do to get a larger room is to have doors open and if you choose to open one or more windows, you can place a larger chimney-free stove in a smaller room. The size of the burner is what determines where you can place it, it is not the size of the stove itself.
Explore more to our intelligent ethanol fireplace burner here .