Four Reasons You Should Carry Stove Boards in Your Store

There are dozens and dozens of wood, gas, and pellet stove models out there, but they all have one thing in common: they require non-combustible ember and thermal protection for their surrounding walls and floors. This protection is vital as it helps prevent accidental house fires.

One of the best ways to provide this protection is by way of a stove board — a mineral fiber board wrapped in steel that insulates combustible surfaces from embers and flames.

As a manufacturer who produces thousands of stove boards every year, we hear a lot of questions about them from retailers and distribution partners:

• Should I carry stove boards in my store?
• How will they help my sales numbers?
• If I decide to carry them, how should I display them?

We want to help answer those questions — and more — for you. In this guide, we’re going to cover four reasons why you should add stove boards to your product offering.

By the time you’re finished here, you’ll understand what stove boards are, how they work, which sizes and colors are available, and even tried-and-tested stove board retail display methods.

1. They’re Easy Add-on Sales

If you carry gas, pellet, or wood stoves in your store, selling stove boards is a no-brainer. It’s sort of like selling ammo at a gun store: one will greatly help to sell the other.

Most heating appliances come with suggested clearance-to-combustibles measurements, or the distances the appliances should be kept from flammable materials. Stoves tend to be installed too close to combustibles (like carpet, drywall, or wood floors) simply because there’s no viable place to put them otherwise.

Stove boards help these stoves meet their manufacturers’ clearance-to-combustibles requirements. They allow stoves to be installed anywhere while still meeting required ember and insulation protection guidelines.

They also offer a sense of safety and security for the appliance owner. Sure, a stove board adds a bit of money to the bill of a wood stove purchase. But it also greatly mitigates the risk of a house fire.

Simply put, anyone buying a wood stove should also be walking out of the store with a stove board.

2. They’re UL-Approved

There are two types of stove boards out there:

• Type 1
• Type 2

Type 1 stove boards are rated for ember and scratch protection, but they are not UL-approved by the Underwriters Laboratories, a global safety science company that tests a wide array of products for a range of safety ratings. These stove boards are not rated for thermal protection.

Type 2 stove boards, on the other hand, are UL-approved. They can be used as hearth extenders, wall shields, and under additional heating appliances (like kerosene, gas, and electric heaters).

At HY-C, we offer both type 1 and type 2 stove boards, allowing us to provide a spectrum of protection for all kinds of heating products.

3. There are Plenty of Size and Color Options

Every heating appliance installation is different. Different stoves have different clearance-to-combustibles measurements, and these measurements may also change due to local codes.

That’s why we offer stove boards in a variety of sizes: to accommodate a broad range of clearance-to-combustibles requirements. We even manufacture our boards in three different colors (black, slate, and wood grain) to match the aesthetics of your customers’ homes.

The following chart contains our standard stove board sizes (in inches) for each color, as well as the retail weight of each board:

4. They Don’t Take up Much Space (if They’re Displayed Well)

At HY-C, we work with our retail partners as often as possible not only to suggest best practices for displaying the products we manufacture, but also to design the products themselves to be easy to display.

Of course, the final decision is always up to you, the retailer. But regarding stove boards, we’ve found that a floor rack is the best possible display method for a few reasons:

1. It offers the most economical use of space while still clearly displaying the product
2. It frees up shelf space that can be used for other products
3. It allows retailers to place the boards near their selection of wood stoves
4. It’s offers the easiest way for a customer to pick up their board to bring to the register

The racks themselves are relatively straightforward, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture. They can also accommodate multiple board sizes in one location much more efficiently.

We’ve found that stove boards don’t work nearly as well on shelves simply because of the demanding amount of width they require:

We know retailers are constantly fighting for every square inch of floor space to streamline and enhance their product selection. We know stove boards are big, so we like to work with our partners to make displaying them in their stores as easy as possible.

Adding Stove Boards to Your Product Selection

Stove boards may not be the most flashy, exciting product, but what they lack in panache, they make up for in utility and safety. Type 2 boards are UL-approved, available in plenty of sizes and colors to meet your customers’ needs, and are all but required with every wood stove purchase.

Customers nowadays are smart and safety-conscious. If they’re committed to purchasing a wood stove (and all the know-how and hard work that comes with owning one), they’ll be willing to spend a few extra bucks to make sure that stove operates as safely as possible.

If you’re interested in adding stove boards to your product repertoire, be sure to get in touch with our sales team. They’ll be happy to work with you to help find the right selection of boards that will best fill the needs of the customers in your area.