Running costs?

What do you find it costs you a year to run buying wood (if you buy wood that is)& sweeping the flu?

Has using a Wood stove saved you money compared to using alternative heating? Such as your central heating costs?

What sort of saving are you making? I guess that's the question I am asking.

Ta.

Never made a saving, I think they are very expensive to run, but very nice and worth every penny.

yeah you don't do it because it's cheaper, you do it because it looks and feels nice, some might make an eco argument that you're not burning fossil fuels (and we don't have our gas CH on in the evenings now anymore) but it's all a bit nebulous really

The 'saving' is in having our gas CH off/low and not having to rely on foreign supplies / one source of heating

I reckon we get though £150 worth of wood but can't compare that to what it would be if it was gas only. I would recommend them, brilliant things, just ensure you can get good supplies of decent wood (below 25% mc) and do as much work to insulate your home as is feasible and have as efficient a boiler as poss with a descent room stat(s)

TS

Cost me next to bog all but that's because I can get the wood for free, well costs some many hours and some cost for the chainsaw running but that's it.

The sweep charged about £30 IIRC.

I top it up with coal which is going to work out about £20 a month.

The friends who I have chatted to who have them, all seem to think it saves them money, most also buy their wood, apart from one who has a free source.

Some claim to save up to £400 pa, which is why I fired the question.

I have one, we put in because we have storage heaters, which have no heat left in the evening, it's a mid terrace cottage about 150 years old, so no cavity walls to insulate, very draughty windows and external doors.
I find scavenge as much wood as possible all year round to get as much 'free' heating as possible, had chimney lined this year which was about £500 sweep £35.
Love it would'nt want to change it for gas central heating.

we got a wood buring stove installed late last year, didnt put the central heating on until mid december, its back off again now.

Just got our gas bill for the last quarter, they OWE us £160, we probably spent that on wood though, but am safely smug in the fact that I am doing my bit for the environment, apart from importing the stove from Sweden that is. 😀

get to know a l =ocal tree surgeon it is waste product to them and you can usually get it for a very good price. Chain saw hire [b]PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE NEVER USED ONE PLEASE [/b] and alog splitter costs next to nowt £50 ish and enough logs – get them in May ish when no one is busy. Split and season as required

Have never bought a piece of timber to put in ours, but I get as many off-cuts as I like from work so never short of fuel. Bought a sweep brush from Screwfix for about £5 and sweep the chimney every year or so. It's very simple.

Beware though that many people live in smokeless zones (as defined under current legeslation) and so if you are seen burning logs in such area then the Environmental Health of the council can (and will) fine you. With the growth in use of such stoves and logs etc then there may well be a severe crackdown by them

C

Our burner and an open fire, the former for days at home and the latter for evenings means that our gas boiler hasn't been above 2 out 0f 5 notches this winter. The house is 100 years old with the original windows, doors and unfelted tile roof. Thats got to point to some efficiency of burning. Plenty of draught I suppose! as for paying for timber. never. But then I do live right in the middle of the FoD . I scrounge pallets for kindling and oick up the rest. Another good reason for a 110 landrover. i have even picked up coal by the bucket load in the woods but we do buy the odd bag of that. its cheaper if you go to your local frre mine though 😆

My brother spent £55 on a *bulk* delivery just before Xmas (8 wheelbarrow loads). He has it on every night from 4pm till around 11pm and he has just run out yesterday (we had this conversation in a curry house last night).

He has just had a double order delivered – equivalent to 16 barrow loads delivered in a trailer for £90.

So not all that cheap really – we use ours occassionally when having a cosy night in so it is normally just central heating which costs us £72 a month (for gas AND electricity) and the heating is on all day at the moment as my wife is at home with our two little babies.

Got a mate with a massive house, reckons heating costs are down to £50 a month now as uses log burner a lot….house backs onto a woods mind so wood is gratis!

If you live in a smokeless zone, buy an approved device. We have cost of our gas bill has halved.

Yeah sure the money we save on the gas bill we spend on fuel, however we can have the woodburner on for a lot longer than we ever had the central heating on. Much warmer overall.

I don't want live in a house with out one.

In times of recession people hanker for nostalgia, which is the real reason theres been a lot of chatter about stoves in the last few years

Its also why fish finger sales are on the up

if you happen to have a free/cheap source of wood then a stove is a bit of fun and might save you a few bob topping up your existing heating.

If you have to rely on burning solid fuel for all your heating and hot water then its a time hungry, expensive, dirty pain in the tits, and you'll often be cold.

£30 per Metre cubed for seasoned logs, lasts about 6 weeks. Running most days all day.

if you happen to have a free/cheap source of wood then a stove is a bit of fun and might save you a few bob topping up your existing heating.

If you have to rely on burning solid fuel for all your heating and hot water then its a time hungry, expensive, dirty pain in the tits, and you'll often be cold.

+1

I have a relatively cheap source of wood and oil CH. The stove saves us a bit on oil – which is bluddy expensiive. If we were on mains gas, the numbers wouldn't stack up quite as nicely.

Although the price of oil is comming down nicely this last 2 weeks (thank goodness!)

C

Free wood here, plus £30 for the sweep. We have it on in the evenings and it saves about a litre of oil a day, which is about 50p

We had one fitted in Oct plus a new condensing boiler in the summer. 100 end terrace newly fitted double glazing.

We have scrounged all our wood while dog walking/trail building, etc, although i two thirds filled a Transit Connect with wood from the guy above Keighley for £35 which i've stashed at my sisters to dry out.

When its as cold as it has been recently then its nice to have th GCH on low as well. I think its in spring and autumn that it comes in to its own.

Beware, red wine + stove equals sleep…

Also, if you own a van its hard to drive past a pallet. I find chainsaws a little scary so i use saws instead!!

We have never paid a penney for wood and we get through about 1500ltr of oil a year as well

In comparison the last owners of our house used about 3000-3500ltr a year

so based on that we save about £800 a year

When its as cold as it has been recently then its nice to have th GCH on low as well. I think its in spring and autumn that it comes in to its own.

That's my thinking too. We've had to have the heating on to stop pipes freezing, but that wont be a problem as it warms up a bit.

We only had the stove on even in the subzero temps over Xmas and New Year, house was roasting. Back GCH now though as chimmney didn't like all that heat and something has give, waiting for the builder to fit a flu. House is now not very warm at all and the heat doesn't feel the same.

If you have to rely on burning solid fuel for all your heating and hot water then its a time hungry, expensive, dirty pain in the tits, and you'll often be cold.

Nope. Sorry but I disagree on most of those points – time hungry – depends on the fuel you're burning (higher quality sold fuels will burn long and hot), expensive – not compared to our alternatives which were LPG or oil, dirty – not really, coal/wood is stored properly, and finally cold – nope. Nice and toasty warm through the subzero temperatures of the last couple of months.

Our multi-fuel burner does our domestic hot water and central heating. During the recent cold spell it's been on pretty much 24-7 (banked up overnight) and burning a mixture of wood and solid fuels.

As above – sweep is about £35 – we have it done twice a year.

Fuel costs – if we do buy wood (and we do get some free) then it works out at about £45 a month during the winter months. Solid fuel – it seems to be worthwhile buying the better quality coal like anthracite which is cleaner and burns hotter and longer than normal house coal. In the recent cold snap we've been getting through slightly more but during winter (from Sep through to March) we average about £75's worth in a month. That keeps the house toasty warm with enough hot water for baths and showers for a family of four.

We're going to be installing a coal store which brings down the cost significantly when you can buy it by the 1/2 ton rather than bagged (for comparison – 25kg bag of coal is about £10, 500kg of loose coal should come in at under £200 delivered). Some trees in the garden are coming down in February and these'll be laid up for 18 months – free fuel! Also as mentioned above you can get more gratis if you know a tree surgeon / landscape gardener and often you can get offcuts from woodworkers. One of my new year resolutions is to get the woodpile stocked up and it should be possible without spending too much…

On balance I think we're probably saving. We certainly did on installing central heating using the burner over our alternatives which were either LPG or oil (we don't have gas being out in the country).

Have started looking into this for fitting later this year, and a couple of names seem to keep comeing up in reviews, Clearview and Morso, anyone have any experience of these two? What do people recommend?

Have started looking into this for fitting later this year, and a couple of names seem to keep comeing up in reviews, Clearview and Morso

Same thing here. I've got the fact that 80% of the heat from an open fire goes up the chimney stuck in my head now!
Spoke to Clearview the other day about sizing of a stove for our requirement and it was bigger than I thought. Leaning more towards a Clearview as I know 4 people with them and they rate them very highly, but I know Morso (especially the Squirrel) are good as well.
Tried eBay but s/h Clearview stoves go for about £200 less than the new cost 😯

I've got an open fire and no mains water, so no central heating.
I scavenge wood from wherever I can, owning a Land Rover 110 and trailer helps. I've got about 10 tonnes stacked up in my garden at the moment.
I keep thinking I ought to get a proper log burner, not just for the efficiency, but to keep some heat going all night. I've got up some mornings and found the water in the jerry cans and dog bowl frozen.
If you've got the transport it might be worth a tour of your local industrial estate to scavenge broken pallets if you can.

Is it me? or is it a little ironic when people think wood burning stoves are better for the environment. I mean, do they think wood grows on trees?

we probably spent that on wood though, but am safely smug in the fact that I am doing my bit for the environment, apart from importing the stove from Sweden that is.

Swings and roundabouts on that front. Some Canadian cities have smog in the winter due to the popularity of woodburners.

Saying that we've got Franco Belge Belforts and I wouldn't be without them.
From my experience:
Don't buy a cheap one – the Machine Mart specials are crap.
Don't feed it crap or resinous wood.
Good wood – ash, oak, apple, beech.
bad wood – pallets (from the pallet tree, obviously), any fir / pine. Willow (no calorific value).

Well, I have had a nice old Oak that sadly came down on my allotment, just after xmas. Noticed someone has already helped themselves to the odd branch, so looks like I will be busy with the chainsaw this weekend.

If its cut and split, how long will it take to season, couple of years?

Should keep me in wood for a bit 😉

Yeah Morso are very good, we have the badger and it's brilliant. Got ours from stove online.

As is clear from all the previous threads, running costs are totally dependent on where you get your wood from, and what sort of wood – we've been burning very dry apple this winter, which burns lovely but very quickly and so is bad value for money, last year we had some cherry we'd seasoned ourselves for a year, which burnt well but *very* slowly, so turned down low the stove would burn from bedtime right through to morning on one biggish log. Which was lucky as we had no other source of heating downstairs for about 6 weeks… If you have to pay the going commercial rate for wood, I doubt the savings are great.

They're lovely, though – we have perfectly good oil central heating, but I'd rather light the fire every time. We have a Stovax Riva F something and a good drawing chimney and it's dead easy to light, very controllable and trivial to look after – not time hungry, dirty or a pain.

Yup dead easy to look after, open the door brush a few ashes into the pan that haven't fallen through and list the pan out. Now and then clean the glass on the door, sorted.

We've never even had to clean the glass on ours – when it gets hot it cleans itself.

lots of information about the different types of wood and how they burn here

We've got an Aarrow Stratford as our main stove with backboiler. Grand and no hesitations in recommending it. Can't recall the make of the little one we've just had installed (think it's a Stovax) though. The HETAs guy who installed both said that Clearview are good but very pricey for what you get, you can get better for the money apparently (which is why we didn't get one)…

"Have started looking into this for fitting later this year, and a couple of names seem to keep comeing up in reviews, Clearview and Morso, anyone have any experience of these two? What do people recommend?"

We had a Morso 04 fitted in the autumn. One of our friends got a non branded £400 stove fitted about the same time. The Morso is much easier to light, and you can control the burn level easier, it also appears to burn a lot cleaner ie much less ash left in the pan…. oh and the Morso looks much nicer too. However our doesnt appear to kick out much heat until its been running for at least 1 hr, where as the cheaper one kicks out the heat straight away.

We find a mixture of coal and wood creates the hottest/longest burn. We live in Baildon/Bradford and have been looking a wood to buy and its £4 a rubble bag, or £50 for one of those large sack things that are delivered by builders merchants etc. So far however we have used pallets left over from building work, and coal 1 20kg coal bag from a garage which cost £9.50

We have found in the extreme cold weather that the stove alone wouldnt keep the house warm (but it is max 5kw), however what we have tended to do is leave the room thermostat in the lounge so that as the fire heats up it turns the heating off. Then just about enough heat gets upstairs etc. I can see that spring/autumnn will be the best time for the stove.

Don't buy from http://www.stovesareus.co.uk/ we did, and had nothing but trouble.

We've never even had to clean the glass on ours – when it gets hot it cleans itself.

True but ours has been playing up, see above about the flu, if they start burning inefficient the glass goes black. Coal we use FTS can't remember what it stands for now, not the cheapest but very efficient, burns for ages and leaves hardly any remains.

Hot tip:
If you do need to clean the glass use oven hob cleaner. Much cheaper than the stuff from stove suppliers.

We have a 7KW Stove and can easily spend £500 in a winter.

If you have mains gas then you will not save money if you have to buy the wood. If you have oil or LPG (like us) then it will still be cost-effective.

…

LoCo – £30 per cubic meter. That is unbelievably cheap.

If you do need to clean the glass use oven hob cleaner. Much cheaper than the stuff from stove suppliers.

Hotter tip:

Use soap and water.