In my house (I live with my parents) We have two wood burning stoves. One upstairs we dont use, because there is a crack in it somewhere up in the chimney, so every time we use it smoke fills the house. But we do have one downstairs that we use all the time. Both used to be fireplaces, but when we moved in they were woodburning stoves. I love them, they do create a lot of heat, and are easy to use. Alot of them now look very nice, and work great. We use those little log firestarters to start it that you buy anywhere, the grocery store or whatever for like a buck. We lay that down inside on one of those log holder things, then we light some newspaper, and hold it up inside so that it gets warmed up. (i guess you kind of have to start to warm it up, so that it starts a vaccum or something and all the smoke goes up instead of inside the house, but that just may be becasue we are downstairs and its really tall) And then we go and lite the little firestarter, close the door for a minute, and then lay down one or two logs on it, and it usually just goes fine for quite a while! They do create a lot of heat, and they are really nice to sit and watch. We can usually turn off our heat downstairs when its going, and the room is huge, its a whole downstairs of an oversided raised ranch, so it does create a lot of heat. There are alot of things that you can buy for both woodstoves and fireplaces, that direct the heat from the back to the front, and fans and stuff. A good place to get that stuff is Plow and Hearth. They have a website of the same name, check there to see if any of those things can help you out! Hope this helps!
