Beauly

Ah, ok.

I guess Fife is a bit too far.

FunkyDunc – Member
Oh now theres a question, what saw for cutting logs??

I bought one of these:

and one of these:

Total spend about £100. More than a handsaw but it gets through a pile of logs in minutes.

For about 4 years I lived in a house with a solid fuel burner with back boiler, so it heated up three radiators upstairs and the hot water tank without being too hot in the room it was in. I ran it on coal, about 200kg a month for 6-7 months, going evenings and weekends. I used fire bricks to reduce the harth size and keep it burning strongly as not to soot it up. I’d recommend the back boiler option to get the most out of the heat you’re producing.

Stoner brings up a good point: Using heat from the stove pipe as a heat source. IMO this is a huge inefficiency of older uk housing stock using stoves as a lot of the heat is soaked up by a brick built chimney at the edge of a house which radiates very little heat into the house.

In France most stoves will have an exposed stove pipe which gives out a considerable amount of heat as it passes through the house. Ours is boxed in slightly but it rises through the centre of the open plan part of the house. The section downstairs immediatley above the stove is a huge box but it has the pipe runinng inside it, and there are vents in the box to set up convection currents which work REALLY well

Excellent thread as i was going to ask alot of the same questions. How much do you reckon for a full instal inc radiators, hot water cylinder etc?
My chinmey head has been knocked down to just below the roof height, whats the easiest/cheapest way to get this going again, stainless twin wall through roof or new chimney head?

Aye Fife a wee bit of a jaunt for me unless you want to wait till next summer 🙂

IMO this is a huge inefficiency of older uk housing stock using stoves as a lot of the heat is soaked up by a brick built chimney at the edge of a house which radiates very little heat into the house.

So true, default position for so many architects is the chimney on the gable, exposed to wind chill on 3 sides all the way up with a tall stack exposed on all 4 sides – the most rubbish chimney design possible.

The Scandinavians/Russians got it right a couple of hundred years ago with masonry heaters
If I had the opportunity to build again one of these would be at the heart of my home without any doubt.

Costs quoted look about the same as I paid for fitting. We’ve got a 5kw stove that was supplementary to the house heating but found we only use the radiators when temperatures are low. It replaced an open gas fire that was basically a big heat black hole. That’s another benefit of a stove (especially lined) is that the chimney is getting sealed off from the room so if the stove isn’t on then it isn’t drawing all the warm air out of the room.

I’m also doing something a little similar to Stoner. I bought 7 acres of woodland to act as the wood supply (as well as being an investment). Not sure in the short it’s worth the money (definitely not if you cost the labour I’ve put in) but I like managing it and it has other benefits. It’s great to be having a log fire from wood that I’ve cut and split myself.

Very interesting stuff.
We’re going down a similar route of fitting a stove next summer time on our 1970’s build with leaky chimney. Our ‘front room’ we don’t currently use (3×4.5×2.3m) and the chimney stack from it has had another room built around it (i.e., an extension on the side of the house) which tends to be very cold as it’s very sheltered/NE facing/big windows/etc.
Had cavity wall put in & loft insulation, but we were wondering whether we can help heat that room using either a vent from the stove/chimney, or whether the heating up of the brickwork would seep through and help out in this cold room?
The aperture we’re looking at is narrow – 50cm or thereabouts – so we were looking at a stove like this to try and fit. Any thoughts or assistance greatly appreciated!

The quality of the flue is so important – what you are aiming to achieve is a narrow tall column of hot gases, which rises smoothly up the flue. An old brick flue might leak and might not draw as well as a modern class 1 flue (stacked clay rings) or a SS lined flue. A mahoosive old style flue a couple of feet square will take a lot of heating to draw well and until then will suffer from downdrafts and smoking.

I have a question to ask while all the stove experts are on one thread, if you don’t mind (please and thank you!):

I’ve got a wood burner in my dining room, it’s brilliant. So much so that i’ve just bought a Hamlet Cambourne Compact off eBay (£111 delivered!) to replace the small open fire in my living room.

Now, when i light the open fire at the moment it draws fine, and there are no leaks into the upstairs rooms. So, i’m assuming i don’t need to get the chimney lined.
As far as i can figure out, to install the stove i just need to get a short vertical length of flue and make a register plate to block up the chimney opening around it. Seems i need about 10cm of flue above the plate.

Is that remotely correct?

Yes Finbar thats all I did, got the chimney swept first and the sweep told me not to waste my money on a liner as there was nowt wrong with the chimney. Just bought a flue pipe and register plate and installed the stove myself. I would get the chimney checked out first though.

Thanks bone_idle, that’s helpful. I’ll get the chimney swept before i put it in so i’ll ask the chimney sweep what he reckons.

Finbar I think Globalti is correct

With regards getting the chimney lined I had it explained to me as follows.

It is the heat in the air that rises up the chimney making the chimney draw. If the air is not hot enough it will effectively stall at some point before it reaches the top of the chimney not drawing the fire well.

Open fire puts a large proportion of its heat up the chimney so easily warming up a standard unligned chimney.

A woodburner puts a much smaller amount of heat up the chimney and as a result it can be very difficult to get it to draw effectively. Restricting its area gives it a smaller area and smaller surface area to draw heat out of the gas in the chimney.

I might have been taken in by our installer, we had our chimney ligned and it works very well. You are supposed to get the log burner installed by a HETAS registered installer but if you are going to ignore this fact and do it your self you could always try the register plate and see how you get on, not much lost if you then need to line the chimney.

My unlined chimney draws like crazy but I have the register plate sealed up nicely, my dads got a wood burner in an old Victorian cottage with no liner had it years no problem. I am sure a liner’s got its advantages but if your chimney sound, draws and does’nt leak smoke into your other rooms then its not really esential.

I do think the whole liner thing is a bit over sold, But then if I had a stove shop I would recommend lining the chimney at £1000 ago too.
I believe building regs require it now.

finbar be sure to leave a hatch or 2 in the plate so it can be hoovered out. I see this regularly without any cleaning access and it is potentially very dangerous.
As the chimney is swept, over time this plate could have a couple of buckets worth of soot and tarry lumps on top of it. If that then goes on fire it can burn long and hot, leading to all sorts of unpleasantness.

A HETAS registered sweep will refuse to sweep an install like that.

Another option is to put in the plate then flaunch up at a 45 deg angle to the chimney wall so there are no flat areas for soot to collect on.

If you want to check your chimney properly it is not difficult to do, here’s a guide – near the bottom of the page – smoke testing
Smoke test

Thanks for the advice all.

Another option is to put in the plate then flaunch up at a 45 deg angle to the chimney wall so there are no flat areas for soot to collect on.

Maybe i’m misunderstanding you bedmaker, but wouldn’t the soot then just collect in the bottom of the “v” instead?

Fitting a stove either needs to be done by a hetas fitter who can sign it off or building control. The hetas guys can deviate from the regs whilst building control will be a lot more strict (that was what buliding control told me). When talkin g about deviation I am talking on distance from walls and hearth size not on critical safety stuff.
If the stove isnt signed off you could well find that you have invalidated your house insureance.

The whole liner or not is interesting our sweep said that our chimney was solid and didnt need it but once you read up about it there is a huge difference between an open fire and wood burner when you look at the heat and volume of the efflux .
The liner and bits were only about £200 and that was the 916/916 (the expensive one for multifuel) and got it local just got the guy to match internet prices .the inital quote was £1ooish per meter and after price match £25.

Maybe i’m misunderstanding you bedmaker, but wouldn’t the soot then just collect in the bottom of the “v” instead?

Your flue pipe is at the bottom of the v so soot can fall into the stove and get cleared out.

Ah, i understand now 😀

Mate fancied a wood burner but couldn’t believe the price of them so he thought he’d knock one up himself. He’s a fitter by trade and called in a few favours and came up with this:

The cost? £150.Quite impressive

Like!

That’s superb.
Tell him he’s got his flue pipe on upside down though…

Steampunk stove – nice!

I am loving that – he could make and sell those and make gazillions.

we easily munch through 15 m^3 a year with a small 5kW stove.

Is that you only source of heat?

Pretty much, yes – the house is a well insulated 3-bed-semi. We start burning around October and go through til April. The fire will be in constantly in that time. The house has thermostatic GCH, and I can count on my fingers the number of times the boiler has clicked on since we fitted the stove 3 years ago. Yes, my source of wood is free….. 😉

EDIT: …and as suggested above, given that the fule is free, I kick myself everyday that we didn’t fit a bigger stove/backboiler when the hosue was in bits and the chance to route the pipework neatly was there…..

bristolbiker, who did you get to fit your stove? As I am near Bristol and am thinking of getting a couple of wood burners fitted.

Almondsbury Forge. Not the cheapest, but did what they said, when they said and are happy to chat and help when they can. Do our sweeping and keep spares as well. The showroom is quite good – wife had to drag me out last time as they had a wood burning Aga on sale….. 😉

Cool, I will check them out.