That's prompted people to look for ways to save money. Many Canadians are going back to wood. They're installing wood stoves to supplement the furnace and keep heating costs down.

You may be tempted to do the job yourself, to save a few more dollars. But the installation of a modern wood stove is no longer a do-it-yourself job.

Once, fireplaces and wood stoves were smoky, dusty things that produced foul air. But many of them were replaced by sleek gas and propane burners with almost-real logs.

That was good enough for most Canadians - until two years ago, when the ice storm hit much of the eastern part of the country.

"It's amazing how many stove installations have resulted in house fires," says Brian Maltby, chief of fire prevention, Brampton, Ontario

For weeks, there was no electricity and no oil-fired heat. In parts of eastern Canada, life was as it had been a century earlier and wood heat was again a vital winter survival tool.

Brian Maltby, the chief of fire prevention in Brampton, northwest of Toronto, says it's amazing how many stove installations have resulted in house fires.

"I've seen people actually hanging clothing on the chimney as a clothes dryer," Maltby told us. "That's exceptionally dangerous."

Maltby stresses that house fires caused by improper installation of a wood burner need not happen.

"We think if it's to be installed as safe as it can, it should be installed by a professional and up to code," Maltby said. "It's money well spent, it's like insurance."

Installing a wood stove requires a municipal building permit in most parts of the country. Hiring a qualified installer to make sure your stove is save might add $350 to $500 to the cost of your wood stove.

John Gulland developed the reference manuals that became the basis of a national system for training inspectors and installers of wood burning appliances.

"What I hear a lot these days, is I've got a spare flue where my oil furnace used to be now that I've converted to gas," Gulland told Marketplace. "Can I just hook up a wood stove to that open chimney? For several reasons that's a bad idea. People often think of wood burning as a kind of folk technology. Well it can be done simply, but that's not the way to get it done safely."

Recently, wood stove manufacturers have spent millions of dollars developing combustion systems that burn wood more completely and cleanly.

Chimney systems have also improved. That's lead to stoves and fireplaces that produce one-tenth the smoke that older fireplaces did. That means less of the creosote that causes chimney fires.

No law prevents you from installing a stove yourself. But experts recommend installation by a Wood Energy Technical Training (WETT) certified installer.

Herald told us the ideal location for a wood stove in this particular house is the living room.

"It's totally open," she pointed out. "We couldn't have a better location for the chimney. In order for this stove to perform at its best we want to keep the chimney as warm and as straight as we can."

The stovepipe, Herald notes, is critical. A do-it-yourself-er might neglect to use a double-walled stovepipe, opting for a cheaper single walled pipe.

"Galvanized stove pipe is a very common thing and galvanized stove pipe is a dangerous thing to use," Herald cautioned. "It's commonly available in hardware stores and people who don't know what they're looking for will see it as stovepipe and take the wrong one."

Herald says in the old days, people thought it was a good idea to put the wood stove in the basement. Now, she says, they're installed in the living space.

"We use a smaller stove, we burn less wood," Herald explained. "But we also found the stove works much better. We can put the chimney in through the centre of the house rather than outside and it drafts better. The stove doesn't smoke."

Stoves like the one installed in the house in Shelburne will cut a family's heating bill in half. Herald says they're safety certified as well as clean burn certified. Another factor to consider is aesthetics.

"People have to live in this room and live around it and this has to become furniture," Herald said. "So this particular stove is heat-shielded to the extent that given the installation we can get corners close to the wall. Three inches from a wooden wall."

Installed properly, Herald stresses, a wood stove is as safe as any other source of heating.