A Roaring Fire

highrisklowreturn

No looked on amazon etc at fans and they're all made of plastic or unsuitable for some other reason. First move is to get the gap covered above stove - the heat is already good with coal, so I reckon if I get a fireboard in and get it well sealed up and stick reflective insulation behind stove, on fireboard and to the sides of stove, although it will look rather crap, it should assist in retaining a lot more heat.

Not sure what coal to get - looking at maybe a 1/2 tonne of burnglow and a 1/2 of esse a. Would happily get esse at 1 tonne but it takes forever to get going and need something for a quick light. Am presently using a lot of wood to get the stove up to heat but even then it's going out quite a bit on the way and it can be hit and miss to get enough heat to make the coals catch.

Greenfires

Have a search on google for "top down fire lighting" and give that a go. It works with coal/smokeless as well as wood - the reason it works is all to do with coal needing more oxygen than wood to get it going, and if the kindling is below it, the burning of that tends to use a lot of the oxygen up. It sounds a cob way of doing it, but it's an accepted method and it works well.

Andy

muckybutt

highrisklowreturn wrote: »

stick reflective insulation behind stove, on fireboard and to the sides of stove, although it will look rather crap, it should assist in retaining a lot more heat.

You will find that in keeing the sides uncovered the chimney breast will absorb some of the radiant heat and will actually act as a store for that heat giving a longer heat output, putting the reflective foil on will deflect more heat yes but the chimney breast wont store it.

if we have the fire on burning it at roughly 300 deg, the next morning if the fire has gone out the chimney breast is still giving out some warmth....think of it like a night storage heater.

A._Badger

muckybutt wrote: »

You will find that in keeing the sides uncovered the chimney breast will absorb some of the radiant heat and will actually act as a store for that heat giving a longer heat output, putting the reflective foil on will deflect more heat yes but the chimney breast wont store it.

if we have the fire on burning it at roughly 300 deg, the next morning if the fire has gone out the chimney breast is still giving out some warmth....think of it like a night storage heater.

My stove sits in a large inglenook and works in exactly that way. The downside is that it takes a good deal longer for the heat to penetrate into the room after it is lit. The upside is that, after letting the fire go out overnight, the room is heated until the following afternoon by the energy stored in the bricks.

I played around with a fan a year or so ago but wasn't hugely impressed by the results. They may have been better if I'd bought a flat top stove and had been able to stand it on that, but Mrs Badger preferred the look of a stove with a cowl, so the fan had to sit in the bread oven. It worked, but not enough to make me want to justify an overpriced ecofan.

Rule one: anything with 'eco' in the title tends to be: A/ Hippy nonsense (cf 'Ecover' washing powder), B/ woefully overpriced or C/ both.

Greenfires

I think the ecofan argument is one that will run and run, though most people who have them and site them correctly seem to be impressed. I've read quite a few threads on various forums where people have tried to be a bit more scientific and made measurements and timings etc. both with and without, and the results always seem to suggest that they do a pretty good job. An awful lot of narrowboat owners swear by them too - they often have the stove at one end of the boat and the fans seem to make a big difference to the heat getting to the other end which may be up to 60 feet away.

I also believe that the place you sit the thing is important. As far as I remember they are supposed to sit at the back of the stove to one side where they can draw cooler air up from the rear of the stove - it's the difference in temperature between the two sides of the TEG unit that produces the current for the motor - that's why they have those fancy cooling fins on the top - to produce a temp difference between top and bottom plates. If the whole thing is sitting in a hot space I'm guessing they're not going to work as intended, or certainly not as efficiently. Also of course the design of the blades will have a lot to do with it - the ecofan is not meant to provide a stream of hot air like a hairdryer - but rather a much gentler movement of a large volume of air, in spite of the reasonably high fan speed. So putting an entirely different type of fan on the stove can't really be a sound basis to say that ecofans don't or can't work.

Cheers,

Andy

Edited to say that in the majority of cases, A.Badger's rules are pretty much bang on!

A._Badger

I didn't say it didn't work. I said it was overpriced. Regulars here will recall that they can be directly imported for far less. I suspect this is an argument for the numerous 'rip-off Britain' threads elsewhere on MSE.

Generally speaking, I think I agree about positioning, which was why I put the fan I experimented with in my bread oven - that put it just where you say: to the side and behind, pushing cool air across the heat source. It had an effect, but not one, for me, that would justify the price.

Stirling engine fans are designed to be stood on the stove, of course.

In some situations any of these devices may help. But the amount of help is going to vary from installation to installation and they are not cheap.

suki1964

Agree, get them from the other side of the pond - a huge saving

Actually my stove supplier was amazed I got mine so cheap, the just couldnt get them that cheap so I gave him the link

And for the stove stuck in the fireplace it does work pretty well. Mum says its a lot easier to sit in the room with the stove lit as the air doesnt get so "cooked" ( her words)

hethmar

Ive just ordered one from amazon.com for £72 including shipping, seems a reasonable price. I read on another thread someone got the "import deposit" money refunded?

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Subtotal of Items: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 53.40 [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Shipping & Handling: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 6.93 [/SIZE][/FONT]

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[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Import Fees Deposit [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 12.06 [/SIZE][/FONT]

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[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Total for this Order: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 72.39 [/SIZE][/FONT]

suki1964

hethmar wrote: »

Ive just ordered one from amazon.com for £72 including shipping, seems a reasonable price. I read on another thread someone got the "import deposit" money refunded?

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Subtotal of Items: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 53.40 [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Shipping & Handling: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 6.93 [/SIZE][/FONT]

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[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Import Fees Deposit [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 12.06 [/SIZE][/FONT]

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[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] Total for this Order: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1] GBP 72.39 [/SIZE][/FONT]

Yes I got mine back as well

hethmar

In that case its a real bargain compared with UK sites