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"  What&amp;#039;s so special about your stove? Give me your elevator pitch. We are totally focused on affordability and performance. We hope to be the most affordable entrant in the Wood Stove Design Challenge, and also among the most efficient. In spite of our scrooge-like attention to the cost of materials, we also think our entry will be quite attractive. It has design aspects that can be customized by a consumer, so your stove really will be your stove. We accomplish this by supplying custom-cut steel andirons, sides, and cooktops in a variety of paint finishes. Why is it so important for you to enter an affordable woodstove in the competition? Philosophically, the economy has not been kind to millions of people over the last six years. Many people use wood heat because they have to, not because they want to. Often these people use wood as a primary heat source and burn the most wood on a per-capita basis. Anyone who wanted to clean up wood burning would start from the bottom and work their way up.   We decided that for this contest we would try to build a stove that would retail for less than $2000 and be made in North America, but would have performance and aesthetic options that might otherwise cost twice as much or more. We are on track to hit our price target, though it has meant looking at every cut, every bend, every bolt, and weighing the consequences of a lot of difficult decisions. We also wanted to tap into the creativity of our employees and our customers, so we are offering custom design features on different components of the stove, such as sides, andirons, and cooktop. We&amp;#039;ll have some great designs to exhibit at the contest. Why shouldn&amp;#039;t people with limited resources be able to buy an efficient stove with a design that is meaningful to them?  You&amp;#039;re building this stove from scratch especially for the contest (you can follow the progress at Woodstock Soapstone&amp;#039;s blog). Any plans to bring it to production afterward? We started building the stove from scratch in earnest just about a year ago. The stove is being EPA-tested in the next few weeks. It is being field-tested by some serious &amp;quot;stove destroyers&amp;quot; right now, and will be delivered to beta-testers shortly. We expect to put it into production in early 2014. Your stove has a thermoelectric generator (TEG). How does it work and what is it for? A thermoelectric generator is a small, simple device to convert temperature differences into electricity. Even though TEGs are not very efficient, the power is essentially free. We started using TEGs because we thought that we might have to power a fan to pump air into the stove to achieve the air-to-fuel ratios that we wanted for high efficiency and low emissions. But we achieved the desired results passively, without using a fan. So now we are using the TEG to power a stack light, which is helpful when the power goes out, and a cellphone chargeralso helpful when the power goes out. So with this stove if the power goes out you have heat, cooking, light, and cellphone charging. Can you tell me a little more about your company? The company was founded in 1978, in Woodstock, Vt.hence the name. We moved to New Hampshire in 1985, and have been here ever since. We have about 30 employees, and that number has been fairly consistent for decades. A lot of our employees have been here for long periods of time, for 10 to 20 years. Primarily, we have made cast-iron and soapstone stoves for gas and wood. We switched to using mainly steel for this stove to keep the cost down. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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