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MF Fire was featured in Founder Taylor Myers’ home town paper, The Catoctin Banner.

Imagine having a wood stove where all you needed to do was add wood and throw in a match? The stove would then take things from there, getting the fire going and keeping the room where the stove is located at just the right temperature, as well as burning the wood so efficiently that there is only a tiny amount of wood left. The Catalyst electric wood stove is just that and more.

Read more over at the Catoctin Banner’s website, here.

MF Fire operations were recently featured in our own local news in this excellent video article by WHAG.

WHAG’s Nina Kapur paid a visit to our manufacturing facility in Smithsburg, MD to see a Catalyst test unit in operation. We’re proud to be 100% made in the U.S.A. and excited to be a part of bringing manufacturing back to the state of Maryland.

Catalyst is available for pre-0rder today. Be sure to get your wood burning heater before time runs out.

Our hometown is proud of the progress that MF Fire has made in the past year.  It recently featured our journey in a nice article in the Frederick News Post. Co-founders Taylor and Ryan were both born and raised in Frederick County, Maryland, graduating from Catoctin High and Middletown High, respectively.

Since graduating, the two founders attended the University of Maryland for engineering and developed the cleanest, most efficient wood stove on the market. It uses combustion techniques to create The Perfect Burn, regulating the temperature digitally and burning off excess soot along with it. As a result, our high-efficiency wood burning stoves are easier to operate, better for the environment, and require much less maintenance than any wood stove in production.

This is a timely innovation, as wood is a growing source of heat in the US.  In Frederick County specifically, 2,792 households reported using wood as a heating source in 2014, ranking it fifth in popularity. The majority of county households — about 42,935 — reported using electricity as a heating source, followed by utility gas and fuel oil or kerosene, according to the Census Bureau.

The founders have been awarded several prizes in various competitions for the innovation, including the grand prize in the Alliance for Green Heat’s 2013 Wood Stove Decathlon. Now, Taylor and Ryan are taking our high-efficiency wood burning stoves to market with several preorders locked in before the product is launched. As stated in the article, “Myers and Fisher both credit the University of Maryland in helping them to establish the company that now sells the Catalyst — MF Fire. The business is currently raising funds through a relatively new method, called equity crowdfunding, to produce and manufacture the Catalyst stove.”

To read more, visit the FNP here.

Starting Monday,  May 16th 2016 small companies and startups can raise as much as $1 million online from ordinary investors in a 12-month period. MF Fire and our modern wood burner will be one of those companies.

Until now, federal securities laws allowed only wealthy individuals, or so-called accredited investors, to participate in such offerings. The new fundraising option stems from the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act. Under the rules, individuals with income or net worth of less than $100,000 can invest the greater of $2,000, or 5% of either their annual income or net worth, whichever is lower, in small-scale securities offerings in a 12-month period. Investors with income and net worth of at least $100,000 can invest up to 10% of their annual income or net worth, whichever is lower.

Read a bit more in the Wall Street Journal below.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-rules-give-startups-access-to-main-street-investors-1462995761

An excellent new article from Adam Sharp about how MF Fire is in the equity crowdfunding sweet spot for investing in our smart stove technology. According to Adam:

MF Fire falls into what I’d call the “sweet spot” for equity crowdfunding. By this I mean it is a company that:

• Would benefit greatly from having hundreds of investor “champions”
• Is outside the traditional VC’s bailiwick
• Has a founding team with deep and relevant experience
• Could accelerate its business through the buzz surrounding an equity crowdfunding campaign.

Go check out the article at EarlyInvesting.com. If you haven’t already, join our newsletter, and we promise you’ll be the first to know when we open up for crowd funding.

More exciting news, this time in a new article by Fast Company! Author Adele Peters talks about how the ultra-clean Mulciber can make a big difference in the rapidly growing wood heating market.

Peters first explains the experience of a typical San Francisco resident. He or she will not be allowed to warm a living space by cozy fireplace or wood burning stove because of the classic issues: the soot is messy and dangerous, the temperature is difficult to regulate, the air pollution causes asthma.

However, the Mulciber solves all of these pain points, as Peters discusses. The Mulciber, renamed the Catalyst Wood Burning Stove, is ultra clean and fosters The Perfect Burn. It uses a fresh approach to engineering to ensure that there is no wasted energy, money, or effort by regulating the temperature digitally. Founder Taylor Myers explains:  “What our stove does differently is it doesn’t make very much of that particulate matter at all, which makes these clean, so the people who do use wood stoves can continue to use them without polluting the air.”

In other words, MF Fire makes efficient wood stoves that are a more environmentally friendly source of heat than the coal or gas-powered alternatives. There is no soot at all and virtually no smoke, making these efficient wood stoves perfect for a city dweller, where wood is a growing fuel source for heat.

We are thankful for the opportunity to be featured in Fast Company, and we plan to continue working towards market-ready efficient wood stoves available to all consumers.

If you like this article please share it with your friends. We need your help to get the word out. And make sure to stay tuned for additional updates from MF Fire!

Stay warm and more soon,
MF Fire

How can you save the planet? Smithsonian Magazine thinks the ultra-clean Catalyst contemporary wood stove (previously named Mulciber) definitely helps.

Rachel Kaufman, writing for Smithsonian Magazine, thinks that modern wood stoves might be part of the solution to foreign fossil fuels, but only if it is clean.

“The problem with most wood stoves is not the carbon dioxide, but the smoke. “Black carbon,” or soot, from wood stoves and forest fires, is now thought to be the second most significant man-made agent in climate change. It’s also a big health risk, especially in developing nations where wood burning stoves are the primary way people cook food. The World Health Organization estimates that 4 million people die prematurely each year from diseases related to smoke inhalation.”

So how do we make wood stoves better? We get rid of the smoke. Rachel says that that is what “…the Catalyst wood stove, an award-winning modern stove developed with a team at the University of Maryland, does very, very well.”

The Catalyst wood stove brings wood burning technology into the future. Not only does Catalyst reduce emissions, but it also reduces wood consumption due to its smart efficiency. Head over to the Catalyst product page to learn more about our contemporary wood stove and order yours today.

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The University of Maryland’s The Diamondback wrote a great article about us and how we got our start with lots of help from the University of Maryland.It hits on all of our highlights, including our company’s history and our EPA-compliant wood stove (NOTE: This article has since been archived as the Diamondback News website transitioned to a new domain):

• How we went from Fire Protection Engineering students to entrepreneurs of the MF Fire business
• How the Catalyst (formerly the Mulciber) was designed to be the cleanest, most efficient wood stove
• That we won the Low Emissions Prize in the  Wood Stove Decathlon
• Our success with multiple rounds of investor fundraising
• What the testing process was like
• How the founders are proud alumni of the University of Maryland

And of course, our source of energy: “What sets us apart is that we are the first wood stove company that is really interested in helping people to live a natural and sustainable lifestyle,” Myers said.

Since the article was written, the University of Maryland Alumni have launched MF Fire and built an EPA-compliant wood stove, the Catalyst Wood Burning Stove.

“University of Maryland alumni-founded startup company MF Fire, which has been working to commercialize the 93% efficient, almost emission-free Mulciber wood stove, took 2nd place in the national RECESS Pitch competition, held in Las Vegas in late May.

The young company was also recently featured in The Washington Post. The June 21 story by UMD journalism student Jennifer Hottle, “UM’s wood stove creators honored for innovation,” covered the history and growth of Mulciber and MF Fire–including their performance at RECESS–and explored how the unique stove could benefit both homeowners and the environment.”

Read the full article about our electric wood heater here.

“Taylor Myers, a University of Maryland fire science doctoral candidate, and alumnus Ryan Fisher are developing a prototype of an innovative wood burning stove.”

The creators of the Catalyst stove were honored for innovation. Read more about our EPA approved wood burning stove in the Daily Record here.

GVH Live, an online media organization providing news targeted at millennials, profiles founders Taylor Myers and Ryan Fisher as part of their campus innovators series.

The campus is University of Maryland. The innovation is the Mulciber stove, now renamed the Catalyst. This stove is digital, allowing the operator to adjust the temperature from his or her smartphone. The stove is also efficient – the most efficient stove on the market.

These innovators are taking this efficient wood heater to market, upending the wood heating industry. “Emission standards for wood stoves have not been updated in The EPA …proposed new emission standards that would make 95% of presently sold wood stoves illegal. Manufacturers fear that they will be unable to meet these new regulations, and as a result the industry will collapse. The Mulciber stove can fix that.”

Watch them talk about our efficient wood heater here!

The following is an excerpt from an article that once appeared on the University of Maryland Diamondback news about our energy-efficient wood stove heater. The article has since been removed from the website as it underwent a domain change & archiving process.

“Last week, a university team traveled to the National Mall to compete in the Wood Stove Decathlon, earning the top prize in the particulate matter emissions category. 

The event pitted 12 teams against each other from Nov. 15 to 19 and tasked them with building wood stoves. The engineers who made up the teams ranged from employees of established companies to small-time inventors. This university’s team was the only student group. 

Taylor Myers, captain of Maryland University’s Team Mulciber, said the development of the team’s stove began last year when the Alliance for Green Heat, the nonprofit that organized the event, reached out to the university.”

Today, the Mulciber wood stove heater has been renamed the Catalyst Wood Burning Stove, the safest, cleanest, and most efficient stove available on the market.

The Capital News Service profiles the University of Maryland (UMD) student team at the 2013 Wood Stove Decathlon.

Watch the video of how the team “heats up the Mall” with our highly efficient low-emission wood burning stove here.

The New York Times profiled the 2013 Wood Stove Decathlon, a contest that aims to find ways to “get twice as much heat out of a log of firewood”.

The University of Maryland was just one of twelve teams competing to define technology for clean-burning wood stoves. This contest is important because 2.3 million American homes rely on wood as a primary source of heat. A typical wood stove can deliver 40-50% of the energy potential of the wood, but the competitors of the Wood Stove Decathlon are achieving 90% or more in their clean-burning wood stoves. Our team went beyond the approach of merely installing a catalytic converter, similar to how vehicles operate.

The article explains: “The stoves use clever innovations. Traditional stoves pull in cool air, but a team from the University of Maryland put the air intake pipe inside the exhaust pipe, an arrangement that heats the inlet air and cools the exhaust, thus conserving heat and improving efficiency. Their stove, a prototype built partly by the machine shop at the university’s College Park campus, uses a fan to draw in air. A small computer controls the fan, varying its speed to keep the temperature in the firebox in the proper range.

It goes on to explain how the stove, now called the Catalyst Wood Burning Stove, doubles down on efficiency: “In a twist, the electricity to run the computer and fan comes from a thermoelectric generator, driven by the heat of the stove. For production models, the thermoelectric generator will allow the user to recharge a cellphone.” Read the full article here.

The result of this competition are stoves that not only meet the more strict efficiency standards required by the EPA, but also make operation easier and safer for the typical homeowner. Since the competition, that team has continued to seek The Perfect Burn, bringing to market the best clean-burning wood stoves available.It even regulates the temperature using a smartphone app.

They’ve come a long way since the New York Times profiled them, and we can only expect more innovation ahead.

In 2013, we were just students at the University of Maryland. Our team of engineering students entered the Wood Stove Decathlon, a contest designed to spur innovation for the product. At that time, we were underdogs,  representing the only University among several large companies. National Geographic profiled us anyway.

In the video, you can see us working on the first version of the Mulciber stove, now renamed the Catalyst. Our goals were to create something that is easy to use, costs less, and is more efficient than anything on the market currently. Our team was composed of excited students who were eager to put their education to use by creating a super efficient wood stove.

To build the stove, the team first studied the science of how fire works. By diving into the details, they uncovered an innovative way to start & maintain the flame, while also burning off the extra soot. Take it from Taylor: “In a typical wood stove, air flow is driven by combustion, so the fire is what moves the air through the stove itself. By forcing air, we are able to control exactly how much air gets into the stove at any given time. We bring cool outside air down around the outside of the stack, and then the exhaust gases flow up through the middle. As the outside air comes in, it’s warmed by the exhaust gases, and the exhaust gases are in turn cooled by the incoming air. That means a lot of heat which would normally leave your house instead goes back into the stove, which helps improve emissions and improve efficiency in general.”

As shown in the video, our super efficient wood stove even generates more electricity than it uses, and that excess is used to power the fan and other components of the digital stove.

Sounds like a team of more than just underdogs.

(Spoiler: we won the grand prize for efficiency with our super efficient wood stove!)

Popular Mechanics profiles all of the participants in the 2013 Wood Stove Decathlon. Here they talk with founder Taylor Myers about version 1 of the Mulciber, an electric wood burning stove that was a finalist in the contest.

Read the full article here.