We are hoping to buy a house in the next few weeks and my wife wants a woodburner in the living room.

Its a late 1800 bay fronted Victorian Terrace and there are fireplaces in the front living room and dining room, directly behind. The chimneys look like they go straight up through the middle of the house.

The current owners have put in a decorative fireplace in the dining room and have the old original working fireplace in the living room, but its quite ugly and has no redeeming features. They use it very sparingly for burning their old bills.

We inspected the loft and the chimney brickwork was completely rendered over, quite badly, he’d done it himself. I asked why it was rendered over and the reply was that it was faster to do than re-pointing as there were smoke leaks through the old brickwork.

The survey didn’t raise anything but I have my suspicions.

Is there any way we can check the suitability/condition of the chimney’s for the fitting of a woodburner lining?

Secondly, is it possible, and practical, to recover the waste flue heat to heat the house and connect it to the central heating system so it can heat the radiators when on? It seems a waste to let it all go up and out.

firstly ask when the chimney was last swept, it should be done annualy and any sweep who knows what he is about would advice as to the flue’s condition.

then you need to get a hetas registered engineer in to look and quote, but when they do the work double and triple check yourself they have done the job to the manufactureres specifications – i used a really big local company to make sure i would’nt get ripped off, and, erm, they did. took legal threats to get it sorted satisfactorily.

heating radiators via a stove with a back boiler. you can hook some systems into you existing ch or you can run a stand alone system.

whichever way, you are looking at spending 000’s!

Get a well recommended chimney sweep to have a look, as they don’t have a vested interest, and know what they are looking at. Or even get the local sweep to have a look, you never know, he might have done that chimney before and know of any issues?.

If in doubt, I’d get it lined.

even if the existing chimney flue is knackered you would be able to use a flue liner and fit a woodburner.

Thanks, good advice on getting a sweep to have a look. I’ll look for one.

I was always going to get it lined for the woodburner, but after seeing the rendering handywork in the loft, the decorative fireplace and the old rarely used fireplace, I’m now thinking they put in the decorative one becaus there was a problem with the chimney’s and they didn’t/couldn’t rectify it.

@gavtheoldskater: do you mean it will cost £000’s [list]more[/list] for a stove that hooks into the CH system?

Are there any heat recovery systems that can recover heat from the flue?

Will it matter if you’re fitting a liner to the chimney, so long as it’s not going to fall down?

Woodburners tend to be much more efficient than open fires, so you won’t loose so much heat up the chimney. I didn’t think to look into back boilers until late in the process, so I don’t know about helping the central heating. Apart from leaving selected doors open through the house.

If your chimney is straight enough and wide enough you can put the metal flue straight up the chimney so leaking smoke shouldn’t be a problem.
I have one in a house in Spain and the first part of the flue is exposed,and gets very hot,before going through the ceiling.
Some people even leave it exposed on the first floor.
Buy the best woodburner you can afford.Stay away from cheap pressed steel ones and go for one which is cast and as heavy as possible.

There are a few stoves that will take a coil in the back of them as a loop for water heating. They tend to downgrade the overall output of the stove by a couple of kW so you need to size that up (and probably have to add ventilation for the size of the stove). It would then need integrating with the CH system. Suggest you get reading the websites and find a local professional who has experience of stoves and CH system combining. I don’t know of any heat recovery for flues. Have a look at this for starters:

http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/central_heating_wood_stove.html

Check out what geoffj has done with a stove boiler and load charger

Secondly, is it possible, and practical, to recover the waste flue heat to heat the house and connect it to the central heating system so it can heat the radiators when on? It seems a waste to let it all go up and out.

Possibly, but you’d be supprised how little energy you get back. Could possiby be used as the basis for warming/drying air entering the house and thus reducing condensation indoors but I doubt there are any systems for heating water that will pay back.

source: experimenting with waste heat recovery on the university’s boilers as part opf a research project.

Bear in mind the heat isn’t free, it costs me ~50p/day to run the CH at the moment, it costs me £2.50 in petrol to go and steal some wood from the local woods, and thats before the effort of storing drying it! And a back boiler would mean removing heat from the room to the rest of the house so you’d need a huge burner and a lot of wood to heat a whole house.