Advice Needed On A Multi Fuel Wood Burner Please?

Penny-Pincher!!

Hi There!

Can anyone help us?

We are seriously considering putting a woodburning stove in our lounge. We are in a small 2 bed semi and currently have GCH (6 Rads total) and a gas fire in the lounge, which doesnt give out much heat at all.

I am at home 99% of the time and feel the cold severely. Our quarter gas bill came in at £315 and DD put up to £152 pm, so we are looking for a cheaper way to heat the house.

TBH, we spend most of the time downstairs in the lounge, so this is the room I need the warmest. We are able to get alot of free wood, so thats not a problem and may get some coal for colder days. I need the heat consistent because of my illnesses and I am not very mobile, but my OH is my carer and here FT, so he would look after the fire.

So the questions we have are:

(1)What size kw would we need? I see they can start at about 6kw but have seen a nice one at 8kw....would this be too big or insufficient? Our lounge is about 15ft x 13ft.

(2)We have an archway in the lounge to the hallway and stairs. Would the fire heat the whole house up?

(3)How much is a chimney sweep roughly?

(4)Are there any major negatives?

(5)Is coal expensive? Does coal give off more heat?

(6)How much money will we actually save? The current gas fire is naff and expensive to run, so that really isnt an issue, but would we actually be saving anything putting the stove in?

I need to weigh up the pros and cons before going to the next step.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

PP
xx

A._Badger

I'd not like to comment about the size of stove you need as, in my experience, it's a lot harder to work out than the calculators featured on stove makers' sites suggest. For that, my advice would be to get a reliable supplier to make a site visit and advise you directly.

As for the rest, I'll have a go, but these are only personal opinions!

The first thing is to check whether what seems like a lot of free wood really is a lot in terms of the amount a stove will use. Running it all day will consume a great deal of wood and it needs to be the right wood, too - properly seasoned and not just scrap wood contaminated with paint and preservative treatments. Generally speaking, wood like that doesn't come free, so make sure what you can get is the right stuff to use.

You will also need somewhere to store the wood to keep it dry. I use a car port and, if it's any help, a winter's burning uses enough wood to more than fill that car port. That's a rough idea of how much wood you may need to handle.

Coal does give out a lot more heat than wood, but the price of coal has rocketed recently and, as I have found to my cost, if you burn ordinary house coal instead of the even more expensive smokeless fuels, your chimney will clog with soot far quicker and will need quite frequent sweeping.

One, often overlooked, advantage of burning wood is that it greatly reduces the need for cleaning the fire. Coal ashes need emptying once or twice a day. Wood burns best on a bed of its own ashes and you will find that you can go weeks without having to remove it. When you do, it can go straight onto the compost heap - which coal ash cannot.

Then again, who will stack, fetch and chop the wood? It's a forbidding task at 7pm on a February evening when the rain is coming down like bullets, to have to go out and get in a pile of logs!

As for the cost of sweeping, it varies wildly around the country, but where I am (in the rural South East) I pay £35 per sweeping. Previously, in London, I paid a lot more.

In addition to the cost of the stove and the fitting of it, you will almost certainly be told you need a stainless steel chimney liner. Whether you do or not is a moot point, but as the HETAS grip tightens, it seems more or less inevitable that you will end-up with one. What it costs will depend a lot on the size you need, the quality of the liner and who fits it - but don't be surprised if it's around £1,000 on top of the cost of your stove.

If all this sounds very negative, I'm sorry - but you do need your eyes wide open before embarking on this journey. Far too many people just assume woodburners are trouble-free, cheap to run and provide limitless heat for no effort, a few twigs and very little expense. If only!

Would you save money? Only you can tell but do your maths very, very carefully and be pessimistic. Personally, I have a hunch that a modern gas fire would be both a lot more convenient and cheaper to run.

That said, I would no more live without a real fire than running water and my stoves have been my friends for years. I don't mind the effort, the mess, even the cost because the kind of heat they produce pleases me and doesn't slam my sinuses shut, which central heating does.

Sorry if that sounds a bit dour, but I'm trying to be realistic here. If you decide to buy a stove, buy it for the right reasons.If you have any specific questions, please come back with them and I'll try to help.

Penny-Pincher!!

A._Badger wrote: »

I'd not like to comment about the size of stove you need as, in my experience, it's a lot harder to work out than the calculators featured on stove makers' sites suggest. For that, my advice would be to get a reliable supplier to make a site visit and advise you directly.

As for the rest, I'll have a go, but these are only personal opinions!

The first thing is to check whether what seems like a lot of free wood really is a lot in terms of the amount a stove will use. Running it all day will consume a great deal of wood and it needs to be the right wood, too - properly seasoned and not just scrap wood contaminated with paint and preservative treatments. Generally speaking, wood like that doesn't come free, so make sure what you can get is the right stuff to use.

You will also need somewhere to store the wood to keep it dry. I use a car port and, if it's any help, a winter's burning uses enough wood to more than fill that car port. That's a rough idea of how much wood you may need to handle.

Coal does give out a lot more heat than wood, but the price of coal has rocketed recently and, as I have found to my cost, if you burn ordinary house coal instead of the even more expensive smokeless fuels, your chimney will clog with soot far quicker and will need quite frequent sweeping.

One, often overlooked, advantage of burning wood is that it greatly reduces the need for cleaning the fire. Coal ashes need emptying once or twice a day. Wood burns best on a bed of its own ashes and you will find that you can go weeks without having to remove it. When you do, it can go straight onto the compost heap - which coal ash cannot.

Then again, who will stack, fetch and chop the wood? It's a forbidding task at 7pm on a February evening when the rain is coming down like bullets, to have to go out and get in a pile of logs!

As for the cost of sweeping, it varies wildly around the country, but where I am (in the rural South East) I pay £35 per sweeping. Previously, in London, I paid a lot more.

In addition to the cost of the stove and the fitting of it, you will almost certainly be told you need a stainless steel chimney liner. Whether you do or not is a moot point, but as the HETAS grip tightens, it seems more or less inevitable that you will end-up with one. What it costs will depend a lot on the size you need, the quality of the liner and who fits it - but don't be surprised if it's around £1,000 on top of the cost of your stove.

If all this sounds very negative, I'm sorry - but you do need your eyes wide open before embarking on this journey. Far too many people just assume woodburners are trouble-free, cheap to run and provide limitless heat for no effort, a few twigs and very little expense. If only!

Would you save money? Only you can tell but do your maths very, very carefully and be pessimistic. Personally, I have a hunch that a modern gas fire would be both a lot more convenient and cheaper to run.

That said, I would no more live without a real fire than running water and my stoves have been my friends for years. I don't mind the effort, the mess, even the cost because the kind of heat they produce pleases me and doesn't slam my sinuses shut, which central heating does.

Sorry if that sounds a bit dour, but I'm trying to be realistic here. If you decide to buy a stove, buy it for the right reasons.If you have any specific questions, please come back with them and I'll try to help.

Thanks for you post and appreciate your honesty. You have stated some facts that I didnt realise.

What is HETAS? Will the liner eventually become compulsory do you think?

The FREE wood could be anything I suppose, so alot by the sound of it, may not even be suitable to burn

I will get hubby to take a look at this thread and maybe we can come to a decision.

Thanks again.

PP
xx

Oldernotwiser

In your situation I'd put in a better gas fire and/or improve your insulation. Multi fuel heaters throw out a lot of heat and might well be too much for a small room like yours. They can also be a lot of work if there's only one person able to deal with it and they increase the amount of cleaning that needs doing.

Is there anyway you could have a short holiday somewhere that has one of these so you could get an idea of what's involved?

A._Badger

Penny-Pincher!! wrote: »

Thanks for you post and appreciate your honesty. You have stated some facts that I didnt realise.

What is HETAS? Will the liner eventually become compulsory do you think?

The FREE wood could be anything I suppose, so alot by the sound of it, may not even be suitable to burn

I will get hubby to take a look at this thread and maybe we can come to a decision.

Thanks again.

PP
xx

HETAS is one of those organisations (like CORGI) which, although it is a privately run body, has, in effect, been given a monopoly by our lords and masters in government and can set the regulations surrounding the area in which it operates.

Apparently, stoves should be fitted by HETAs registered fitters - either that or, I believe, you can have your installation approved by the local council's building regulations department - but please don't take my word on that: it's only hearsay.

I suspect liners are, thanks to HETAS, more or less becoming compulsory now. but I remain a little sceptical. After all, wood burning stoves have been around a lot longer than chimney liners. A lot longer that stainless steel, come to that!


Good luck with your quest!

Penny-Pincher!!

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

In your situation I'd put in a better gas fire and/or improve your insulation. Multi fuel heaters throw out a lot of heat and might well be too much for a small room like yours. They can also be a lot of work if there's only one person able to deal with it and they increase the amount of cleaning that needs doing.

Is there anyway you could have a short holiday somewhere that has one of these so you could get an idea of what's involved?

Thanks ever so much.

I actually said to OH, would it not be better to close the arch on the lounge and put in a door and maybe lay carpet down just in the lounge as we have laminate atm?

Our current fire is 2kw, which I think is not very powerful, but having a door on the lounge would make it much warmer and we would only need to heat that 1 room hot IYKWIM?

TBH, I think it would be too much work for OH as he does so much already for me and my care needs and finding the time to maintain wood and cut it etc might be difficult.

Thanks

PP
xx

Oldernotwiser

Penny-Pincher!! wrote: »

TBH, I think it would be too much work for OH as he does so much already for me and my care needs and finding the time to maintain wood and cut it etc might be difficult.

Thanks

PP
xx

I look after my husband as well and I know I wouldn't want the extra work involved in this. We had one years ago and it was great in a big old house but we were both fit and able to share the work; also we burned coal - these things devour wood at a rate of knots!

I think your idea is much better.

whichburner

Hi,
I run retail and trade multi-fuel stove business, I'd like to address a couple of the issues raised here.The rate that the stove consumes fuel is dependent on lots of variables. Wind, air temp, type of fuel and how your burners has been fitted and obviously the outside temp. I agree that they are more work than a gas fire (well you turn on a switch). But the benefits far out weigh any negatives. You will save money, you will enjoy the snap crackle and pop of a "real fire". By the sound of things, and we recommend a site visit at least once, you should look at a unit that can heat your room and your radiators. You really notice the savings. Just a quick word on HETAS, I take on board peoples general suspicions,but look at it this way. They are there to protect us from unscurpilious fitters risking our homes and lives for a quick profit.
My advice use only a recommended or established business, ask for satisified customers you can contact. But take the plunge, saving money and helping to save the planet.
Keep the Home Fires Burning!

fireside_2

For free advice on any aspect of Solid Fuel heating contact the Solid Fuel Association on 0845 601 4406.
SFACMF

A._Badger

<snipped>

whichburner wrote: »

Hi,
. Just a quick word on HETAS, I take on board peoples general suspicions,but look at it this way. They are there to protect us from unscurpilious fitters risking our homes and lives for a quick profit.

That is one way of looking at it. It's true there were (and almost certainly are) cowboy installers. But who polices HETAS? And for whose ultimate benefit is it run?

Last year I walked round a building with a highly qualified electronics engineer who was also certified to handle electrical installations.

In a fit of honesty and common sense, he explained to me, step by step, how many of the increasingly strict regulations imposed by the electrical equivalent of HETAS really were nothing other than gilding the lilly - the ratchet effect, if you like, where a body which exists to impose regulations increases the number of them to justify its existence.

What no one seems willing to undertake is a sober cost/benefit analysis of what these privatised bodies achieve against what they cost.

SallyD

PennyPincher thanks for posting this - very informative replies.