It’s a nice dilemma to have but I’m pulling my hair out!

We have a conservatory coming off our living rm that really needs a heat source, however if we put the wood burner in there in all honesty it probably won’t get used as we don’t go in there that much. Wife has had the idea of using the conservatory as a dining room and installing a wood burner in the adjoining living room where we could ‘watch’ it and it would be used.

We’ve been in touch with an installer who said as the house is modern and well insulated we’re limited to something around a 4kW stove (and even that’s a bit much) and it wouldn’t really do anything for the temperature in the conservatory.

Any ideas apart from fitting a gas fire?

Put the woodburner in the conservatory and then you’ll use the conservatory more?? I might be missing the point?

4kW kicks out plenty of heat. Get a stovetop fan to help move it around a bit.

You won’t want to be in the conservatory in the dull, dark, short days and long nights of winter: just the time when a glowing fire is welcome and saves you some on your central heating bill.

Just reread my post and doesn’t really make much sense. If we put the burner in the living rm will it heat the conservatory enough to be usable just by opening the patio doors between the two? The Installer is saying living rm will be boiling and conservatory still freezing.

Putting the stove in the conservatory would be the ideal (and much cheaper) way of installing a log burner but with only a table and chairs in there we’re not exactly going to spend the night in there and it’s not big enough to put a sofa in there too.

I call stove top fans hokkum. Convection shall circulate air more than a fan ever will. Coming down the stairs in my house you can feel the convection draft as the heat rises. And the installer is right about heat transfer between rooms.

I use a 5kw woodburner to heat a whole house. It nearly works. The lounge, where the stove is, has an open staircase off it, so in reality the lounge and all of upstairs heats just fine. The kitchen and downstairs study not so much.

I’d put the stove in the lounge anyway. Brilliant things.

I call stove top fans hokkum. Convection shall circulate air more than a fan ever will.

Same here. We bought a fan and felt sod all difference.

Install two wood burners.

I think a stove in the lounge with open doors would mostly heat the conservatory roof. It depends, I suppose, on U-values which I don’t know about. But then at the end of the evening when you shut the doors the house would gain some benefit.

I would’ve thought that if the stove in the lounge heats the conservatory sufficiently for you to be comfortable there, then the lounge itself would be uncomfortably warm.

I’m no expert, he’s seen the rooms and is probably knowledgeable. As per others, heat rises so it will probably heat from the top downwards in the conservatory. So, having the heat source in another room probably won’t work very well or you’d have to have the stove going for an Atlantic Blue Ribbon attempt for quite a while to create anything worthwhile in the conservatory and then maintain ramming speed whilst you’re in the conservatory, probably making it really uncomfortable in the lounge for that whole time. saying that, you def should have the stove in the lounge IMO, it seems completely pointless putting it in a room you hardly use. I’d just stick a supplementary electric convector/oil heater on in there on those rare occasions.

knock down the conservatory you never use and build a proper insulated extension with some sort of roof lantern to get light in and open out the living space into it? No more wasted space you don’t use that just takes light from rooms you do and plenty of room for a nice wood burner.

Andyl we’ve come t that exact conclusion last night. We’re going to get the log burner sorted etc then probably build an extension next year. I’ve worked out what power stove would be needed to heat the larger room and it’s actually the same as just the living rm as they don’t make one small enough for just the living rm (off the top of my head something like 1.7kW for living rm and 3.7kW for both rooms).

We have just had a 5KW woodburner installed in a single story extension (12′ x 16′), there are bifold doors to the living room (14′ x 20′) and there is sufficient heat from the Stove to heat both rooms.
if we leave the single doors from the Livingroom to the hall or dining room open, there is very little heat transferred between rooms.

Mostly the same as others have written above; our multifuel gets the room flippin’ hot and when you open the door a blast of hot air goes up the stairs and a blast of cold air comes in to replace it at floor level. I think you’d find the arrangement uncomfortably draughty as warm air went out into the conservatory and out through the roof.

For the last 6 months we’ve had my sick MIL staying in the front room so the front room stove has been lit almost all day and the lounge stove evenings only; combined with the Aga in the kitchen the heating almost never comes on.