JUCA uses a totally different approach. Our NON-air-tight design allows the woodstove/fireplace to operate very similarly to how a fireplace traditionally operated, VERY cleanly. (You could even roast marshmallows or make popcorn in it, which you cannot do with ANY competing product! Competing products cannot be operated with the door open because the design theory doesn't allow it.) Our computer-designed heat exchange structure up above captures most of the heat that would have been lost up the chimney, we have a huge firebox size, a very large glass viewing area, a large door for feeding wood, and a blower that is MUCH stronger than any competitor.

All these characteristics combine to capture the most heat possible from the fire's output, while not messing up the fire's original operation. That original operation always included very clean burning, which the JUCA's design maintains. JUCAs do NOT share the air-tight products' problems of huge creosote and pollution creation. JUCA's non-air-tight design allows capturing all that heat while burning so cleanly that no "catalytic combustor" or "secondary burn" is even necessary or desirable!

This difference between the JUCA's non-airtight design and ALL competing products (which are ALL airtight) has some other implications. Because those airtight products developed a bad reputation in the 1980s for creating a lot of pollution and creosote (because of the suffocation of the airtight operation), the EPA and other government agencies passed stringent laws applying to them. Commonly, the chimney must be re-lined ($$$).

A JUCA woodburner does not require all that, and the EPA and other agencies agree. The JUCA unit actually operates as a traditional old fireplace did with the only major difference being that the JUCA captures most of the heat that would have gone up the chimney. Building fires is the same as in a conventional fireplace, and the fire behaves as you expect a fireplace fire to behave. That is definitely NOT true of airtight woodstoves and fireplaces, which operate VERY differently!

Why are JUCAs different from all competing Woodburners?

Two solutions arose. The Airtight design and the JUCA design.

• The airtight approach was to severely restrict the amount of air available to the fire. With less air, less burning (which is actually chemical oxidation of the fuel) could occur, which means less excessive heat production, which is good. Since the wood did not get consumed as rapidly, it lasted longer, giving longer burn times, which is also good.

  With MODERATE restriction of the air supply, this represented a great improvement over previous woodburners. During the 1970s, people tended to use them in such an appropriate way.

  When energy awareness became dominant about 1980, people started to try to use such products in extreme ways. They SERIOUSLY restricted the air supply, to make them operate even more efficiently. That happened, but an unexpected consequence was extremely poor burning. Under some conditions, fully 1/3 of the energy in the wood was going up the chimney as creosote and pollution! Which also reduced intrinsic efficiency, but no one noticed.

  In the early 1980s, a lot of houses burned down, because massive unseen creosote accumulations in chimneys would catch fire and burn at over 5000°F, and no chimney could handle that. A lot of pollution was also getting put in the air.

• The JUCA approach was very different. It involved a larger firebox, normal non-airtight burning, MUCH thicker pieces of wood, and a sophisticated heat capture system. In principle, the fire would be allowed to burn as rapidly as it wished, but the thick pieces of wood (logs) NATURALLY only burn at a moderate rate, because burning can only occur at the SURFACE of a piece of wood. (Thicker logs actually burn more slowly!)

  Thicker logs ALSO naturally burn more EVENLY (for reasonably constant heat output) and for a much longer time.

  The JUCA design accomplishes the goals of evenness of heating and long burn times, in a VERY different way than airtight designs do. In a far more natural way. The burning is extremely complete and efficient and clean. Virtually NO creosote or pollution is created in the fire, as fireplaces have operated for hundreds of years!

  The flaw in the logic so far is that thick logs burn so slowly that they create rather small amounts of heat. This is why the sophisticated heat capture and heat exchanger system in a JUCA is so important. It captures MOST of the heat actually produced, and sends it out into the room and does not allow it to go up the chimney.

  As a footnote, airtight products CAN NOT safely use extensive heat exchangers to improve their efficiency. Since they naturally produce so much creosote in their smoke, and creosote condenses out at about 350°F, they must NOT be extremely efficient. Otherwise, they would cause massive creosote accumulation in their chimney systems. Some products like that were briefly sold around 1980, but they proved to be very dangerous products for this reason. Since JUCAs are non-airtight, the fire burns very cleanly, so there's little very creosote in the smoke, so we can capture the daylights out of the heat in the smoke! An optimally efficient JUCA can have smoke temperatures of 250°F. We are thus able to capture more than an extra hundred degrees of heat from the smoke before it goes up the chimney! Voile! Very high efficiency!