Just moved house and have inherited a Clarke Buckingham stove.No previous experience, so –
a. Is it any good?
b. Seasoned or kiln dried wood?
c. Hard or soft wood?

Would it be worth getting the chimney swept before we start using it?

Just had our chimney swept and he mentioned some good advice and information on this page:

Wood as Fuel

EDIT: Yes – I’d get it swept! Burning much more efficiently now.

1:- no idea standard stw answer is what ever I own is better so not as good as Morso
2:- seasoned , kiln dried is expensive and if bought in bulk will absorb moisture when stored so negating any advantage over seasoned.
3 :- a mix is best.

4:- sort out wood storage and supply . storage first.

5:- GET YOUR CHIMNEY SWEPT . and repeat once a year about this time.

What Crankboy said ^^

there are 2^3 possible correct answers to those questions 😉

Kiln dried wood, is IMO, a very expensive way of eeking the last few KWh/Kg out of the fuel. Seasoning wood yourself (as long as you buy it CHEAP to reflect the fact it needs seasoning) is one of the best energy cost saving things you can do. You can “double” your money’s-worth or more.

as for hard or soft, I favour soft for a number of reasons.
Wood is wood. There’s almost no difference between species in net KWh output per Kg for a given moisture content. Obviously hard woods are denser but this is not in itself a useful thing.

Wood burning is at it’s most efficient when the stove temperature is between 200 and 300 deg C. At this temp, the stove acts as an oven to vaporise the volatile organic compounds in wood into wood gas. The burning of wood gas provides a substantial component of the net heat output. Burning the cellulose of wood itself is not the the main part of the energy release.

Getting and keeping stove temp up high enough with dense hard wood is not nearly as easy as doing it with dry soft woods. I like to use dry (20%<) poplar or willow. A smouldering lump of oak or ash, in a shut down stove box is a waste of fuel.

if you plan to use it often / every night as oppose to weekends and special occasions- think about sweeping twice a year.

once about now pre season – removing any birds nests/dead animals/other detrius that built up over the summer and once mid/towards end of season – jan/feb.

its much easier to do it little an often try to take it all on at once – unless your paying a man 😉

was at my mates last weekend – his chimney had been blocked off for 40 years we opened it up and stuck the rods up. prior to that i dont think it had ever been swept – i had to go at it with the drain unblocker spiral to get through some of the build up.

i got a foot high pile of twigs/sticks and 2 cm thick chunks of tar/cresote/soot build up.

once i assertained he had a clear path through to the pot i stopped and suggested he gets a pro in with chains to really clean the top 8 feet that were badly clogged up.

A smouldering lump of oak or ash, in a shut down stove box is a waste of fuel – good wood that could have become a building/windows/doors/furniture

Overnight burning / slumbering

Don’t do this. Many people think that it is great to fill up their stove with fuel last thing at night and shut the air controls right down. I am always hearing phrases like “It’s great, it keeps in all night”. This is very bad practice and more than half the available fuel load may be lost to the chimney. In an average size stove this could easily mean that over a kilo of vaporised tars / fuel is lost every night. Here is what happens and again, it is all about temperature of the burn. When the air supply to a stove full of burning wood is closed down, the volatile tar vapours (fuel) are still being given off. The temperature inside the stove immediately decreases. The vapourized fuel escapes to the chimney, tarring it up and
causing lots of air pollution. Inside the stove you have begun to manufacture charcoal. Once all the volatile compounds have been driven out of the wood you are left with quite a pure carbon – charcoal. This will then burn at whatever rate the available oxygen allows and the process can take all night. Burning an identical load of wood a bit faster will significantly reduce or eliminate the loss of fuel to the chimney. If you are in the habit of burning at night, then set your air controls so that little or no smoke is coming from the chimney top. You are now burning much more fuel in the stove rather than letting it escape to the chimney. The stove will deliver much more heat to the building but over a shorter period of time. I have had many customers with good stoves and good chimneys, using dry wood but they have been shutting their stove down overnight. The amount of tar and creosote swept out of some of these chimneys has to be seen to be believed. They have been creating
huge amounts of pollution, wasting fuel and greatly increased the chance of a
damaging chimney fire.

sorry for the large quote from HH’ link BUT many many many folk on here could learn from reading that – im fed up reading about folk going on about how easy there stove is to keep burning all night.

im fed up reading about folk going on about how easy there stove is to keep burning all night.

Why? It’s not your stove or chimney that’s getting coked to shit.

Just to keep you fed, I burn all night every night of the winter months without issues. I don’t ever shut it down enough to lose my flame but it still burns for a good 8 hours at a time. More than enough for my short sleeping habits.

I agree that some hardwood is a waste when thrown on a stove, though. All that life and time just to be reduced to ash…

Just to keep you fed, I burn all night every night of the winter months without issues. I don’t ever shut it down enough to lose my flame but it still burns for a good 8 hours at a time. More than enough for my short sleeping habits.

Snap. No need to shut it down they’ll happily burn all night anyway.