Is it safe to operate a woodburner without a baffle plate?

One of the questions we’re asked regularly is whether or not it is safe to operate a woodburner without a baffle plate?

A baffle plate is the metal plate that sits almost horizontally at the top of the inside of your stove.

If we pause briefly to discuss the purpose of a baffle plate, that will help us to answer the question of whether it safe to use your stove without one.

A baffle plate has two main jobs. The first, similarly to the fire liners that it sits above or sometimes rests upon, is to protect the main body of your stove from the intense heat of the fire.

The second job is block the easy exit route of the flammable gases released by your fuel. By preventing the gases from taking a path straight up the flue, the baffle plate keeps the gases in the firebox for longer so that more of them are burned.

So, is it safe to use a woodburner without a baffle plate?

We could probably best summarise the answer to the question as relatively safe but highly inadvisable.

Operating a woodburner without a baffle is unlikely to cause any immediate risk of injury. What it does risk is causing irreparable damage to your stove. As we mentioned, the baffle is there to protect the inside of your stove from intense heat.

Temperatures inside a stove are incredibly high. If your woodburner has no baffle plate this is presumably because it has become damaged or broken in some way. Without a baffle, you’re just exposing the stove body to the conditions that damaged the baffle.

A warped or broken baffle can be replaced fairly inexpensively in comparison to the cost of replacing a warped or broken stove.

Operating a woodburner without a baffle also means that more of the flammable gases from your fuel are going to disappear straight up the chimney without being burned. This is bad for the environment (it’s far greener to burn the flammables than release the unspent fuel into the air) and bad for your pocket (you’re paying for fuel that could be heating your home, but is being pumped into the sky without being burned instead).

So, while operating a stove without a baffle plate doesn’t pose a big safety risk, it is likely to cost you money one way or another. It’s better to make the small investment in a new baffle plate sooner rather than later.

To cut future expenditure, you could read up on what might have caused the damage to your previous baffle plate.