[Closed] wood burning stoves & condensation

As I don't drive, collecting my own wood may be problematic!
Its not that expensive to have it delivered though.

My chimney was mostly sound, but a bit of a mess on top. Now looks the biz
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Scaffolding to 3 story terrace house and chimney (also cleaned and hoovered guttering, painted soil breather pipe, painted window sills, hoovered roof tiles 🙂 ) £500

flue dropped down, fixed in place, new chimney pot and cowl, repair to top incl cover over chimney to upstairs, chimney repointed, downstairs fireplace knocked out to bare shell. £400

12 metres of 316 6" flue liner, top plate, insert, clamp, nose cone £197

Chimney pot, cowl, sand and cement, stone bricks, stone slabs £75

Total so far £972 (I've portioned £200 of scaffold cost to gutter & painting)

Cost for the rest

500mm stove pipe, stove pipe/flue liner adaptor, register plate, CO2 detector £100

Hearth £150 (place in Barnsley selling black slate cut to size, must be others).

Fitting of above incl fire proof plasterboard £200 (agreed with builder)

Fire proof plasterboard £50

Total cost £1472

That just leaves the stove which could be anything from £100 (used off ebay) to £800 (new), my budget is probably going to be £500 max.

I've had 3 stoves fitted now and the best job was the one where we did the labour and payed an unqualified sweep to do the final fitting.

This is roughly what I'm getting downstairs, pic is one of Mugboos. Bearing in mind that any plastering will be done thru insurance as I'm a flood victim, which might add some cost onto your job muddydwarf, depending on what you want.

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My chimney was mostly sound, but a bit of a mess on top. Now looks the biz

And it having the wrong type of pot on for a live fire 😉

Wish I could manage to post pics on here, would be easier to explain what I want.
The built up bit in my fireplace is obviously coming out and will expose some brickwork. Depending on the cosmetic appearance of the bricks I'm toying with the idea of leaving them exposed - is this practical?

And it having the wrong type of pot on for a live fire

Oh, is that going to cause me problems mrbiker? I presume you mean that type of top cowl being a draw issue?, I could get it removed and the other type installed if you genuinely think it will be an issue?. I bought it and the builder didn't say anything, it's just cemented into the pot so could be taken out, maybe.

http://www.camsweep.co.uk/safety/cowls-pots-and-terminals/

Have a look a bit down the page, that's what "can" happen.

And yes, it can cause draw issue although you may not notice.

Oh bugger, cheers for pointing that out, I'll get it removed.

One of mugboos is exposed brick, which looks nice, you could get it repointed if it looks poor.

Depending on the cosmetic appearance of the bricks I'm toying with the idea of leaving them exposed - is this practical?

Yes but it is very messy

YOu need to clean the brick with essentially a sand paper disc, probably take a cutting disc to get it poited

This is all very very messy work

Even sealing up my doors with tape did not prevent the entire house getting a layer of dust on it and there were times when i could not see when i was doing this

Looks nice though IMHO- just mailed you a pic of mine

NeilNevill the 026 needed a new bar and chain and I serviced the carb and fitted a new plug. It's a ripper. I also bought a new husky 135 for light duties and it starts easily but is half the power of the Stihl. Struggles on the bigger stuff. My mum uses an ms170 and gets on well with it.

Cheers JY, haven't seen the brickwork as yet - will form part of the discussion with whoever I contract for the work. It may well be more practical to plaster the entire area.

Are you suggesting I use a 'mummy's saw'? 😯 ... You're probably right 😉

A little saw like a 170/180 is enough to process a lot of fire wood fit a 14" bar and it gets the job done without breaking your back to lift. However .... I'd love a bigger saw. I'd probably never use it... But just knowing I had it and COULD use it if I wanted. 🙂

£150 for a 026, bargain. The older saws are simpler and stronger for it, unhampered by modern emissions controls.

Ha! My point was more that the 170/180 was an easy to use saw.
If Stihl hadn't changed their selling regs I'd have bought one instead of the husky

A non leaking chimney built for an open fire will be , generally though test it, fine with a fire.

Put a big bore exhaust on your car and it will probably be fine as well. Modern stoves are designed and tested to work best with a flue. If building science way back when was what it is now, houses wouldn't even have been built with open fireplaces, so saying it was fine then does not map directly to now.
Stoves are better than open fires and stoves work best with flue liners.

This is the SS cowl I had fitted to our chimney for a multi-fuel stove:

http://www.loftshop.co.uk/products/cowls/colt-top2-anti-downdraught/colt-top-2-stainless

Unfortunately the small screws that secure the lid to the three legs were not stainless so after a couple of years they rusted through. Luckily I can get onto my roof quite easily to check the chimneys, re-flaunch, fettle the cowls etc. so I replaced them with stainless and everything is fine.

It's actually pretty fun fitting your own fire - I did ours.
Not 100% convinced it saved me a bunch of cash, but was something new I'd never done before.
I still need to fit the mantel piece, but that's small fry compared to the rest of the install.
I used the stovefitter's manual too...
write up [url= http://www.drpidgeon.co.uk/blog/me-manme-make-fire-part-1 ]here (part 1)[/url]
and [url= http://www.drpidgeon.co.uk/blog/burn-baby-burnpart-2 ]here (part 2)[/url]

Enjoy!

DrP

Disaster averted, the wrong cowl came off quite easily, luckily the cement hadn't set. Cleaned it up and took it back to swap for a live fire cowl, unfortunately there was only a choice of one. for some reason the instructions told you to remove the bird guard for solid fuel.
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Roast pigeon then?

the real risk is burning unseasoned woods

the real risk my friend discovered was allowing his wife to drive the woodburner as the dripping wet wood delivered last week will all go on, followed by complaints about the fire not burning properly again, followed by another discussion about wet logs, followed by a repeat of the process the next time the stove was used. etc.

my friend discovered that his wife did not like trying to burn anthracite which made a fairly convincing reason for switching to coal

Unfortunately that's the powder-coated alloy version of the cowl, which doesn't last very long in the acid fumes from smokeless fuel. It should be fine if you are only burning wood though.

Burning real coal is risky because with a strong draft it can burn white hot, enough to melt the cast-iron bits inside your stove. My neighbour asked me to have a look at her stove (same Dovre 250 as ours) and I discovered that it was choked solid with reddish dust and the cast iron baffle plate had melted like chocolate. When I questioned her it slowly emerged that she had had a chimney fire (had never had it swept) and the stove had run away out of control with the intense updraft, burning white hot and overheating.

What about smokeless zones? Some stoves are exempt I believe?

Correct. Some stoves are DEFRA exempt, meaning you can burn wood in smokeless zones ie London.

stoves work best with flue liners

Basically you need negative pressure for it to draw and then for the thing that draws to not leak. I am not sure what best means in this context.

Turns out I'm in a smokeless zone so will need an exempt model.

If you Google for smokeless zones you'll find the DEFRA info on gov.UK where you can search for exempt appliances and get a list by manufacturer. There are plenty. A fair few require a smoke control kit to be added to meet the exemption, that is only a little extra.... Iirc it was about £35 for the Stockton 5 I bought. It's basically a replacement for one of the controls that has a stop on it preventing the stove being shut down too much.

Can anyone explain the important bits about regs for the hearth? I tried reading gov regs document J and discovered I have severe dyslexia.

Amazed at the price folk pay to have one fitted. Its not that hard to do tbh

Mostly, yes. Today, no! I'm utterly goosed 🙂 Got there eventually though. 150+ year old houses and their 'charming' features...

Getting back to the OP, yes, a stove will almost certainly improve things. Be careful about insulating the liner though if the chimney is already sweating, vermiculite will draw in moisture like a sponge. I leave uninsulated more often than not.

Hearth regs dependant on stove. Some require a constructional hearth, some don't, so check the stoves installation guide. Other than that it needs to be wide enough and deep enough from the sides and front of the stove, so as to catch (hopefully) any sparks/embers that may pop out when the door is opened.

I was worried that my hearth wasn't quite big enough for my woodburner after I read all the regs, but the HETAS fitter signed it all off.

Needing a DEFRA approved stove limits your choice, but if you go with an independant fitter you can get whatever stove you want, as opposed to being limited by which brands are stocked by a local stove company.