In my vacation house, I’ve got a Hearthstone Heritage wood stove, neither old nor new, and I believe it has been refurbished a bit. When I ran it over Thanksgiving I put an air purifier next to it and ran it on auto. I’d been concerned about air quality with the wood stove. Pleasingly it ran on low and barely blipped when I’d open the door to add logs. Weirdly, it -would- climb up to medium if I opened the door to the garage — I guess it doesn’t like all the varnish and whatnot from there.
So anecdotally, a stove that’s not a rusty old potbelly and has a good draft seems like it could be okay for air quality.
You can sell the trunk of a 200 year oak (though often they’re hollow if they’re that old) but you will have PLENTY of good firewood left behind from harvesting it, with all the branches. The best use of a 200 year old oak is of course to let it be, the backbone of an entire ecosystem. An 80 year old walnut is another story…
So anecdotally, a stove that’s not a rusty old potbelly and has a good draft seems like it could be okay for air quality.
You can sell the trunk of a 200 year oak (though often they’re hollow if they’re that old) but you will have PLENTY of good firewood left behind from harvesting it, with all the branches. The best use of a 200 year old oak is of course to let it be, the backbone of an entire ecosystem. An 80 year old walnut is another story…