Smokeless Fuel Help Please

littlesnuggy

I'm hoping to start using my open fire for the first time since moving in last summer - getting the chimney swept this week in preparation. I live in a smokeless zone though, so I can't just use normal firewood/coal.

I've Googled and found various bags of stuff, but I have no idea a) how long say a 25kg bag would last, b) what is the best and c) which sites are the cheapest.

Can anyone give me any pointers, please?

Thank you!

ormus

as a rough guide a bag should last for 3 or 4 fires.
say c 7kgs per day.

Bogtrotter

In our small 3 bed semi-detached we have a solid fuel burner which can control the rate of burn by adjusting the air inlet.

Generally in winter time it runs 24/7 and we will use between 50-75kgs/week of high quality anthracite depending on the temperature outside.

The best fuel really depends on your situation. IME the heat content of the fuel is similar. We use the high quality anthracite because it produces less ash and a slower burn when we turn the burner down. It can be a pain to get a fire started sometimes so if we weren't running it all the time and lighting a new fire each day we might use something else.

As for prices can't say... think last batch was £260/tonne and maybe £40 less for the lower quality stuff.

littlesnuggy

ormus wrote: »

as a rough guide a bag should last for 3 or 4 fires.
say c 7kgs per day.

:eek: So based on the rough prices I'm finding (£12 for 25kg cheapest so far), that's over £3 a day! Would that be if the fire was kept going all day, though? We'd probably only light it in the evening (say 5pm) and want it going til 11pm.

I was expecting that sort of bag to do at least twice as many fires as you suggest! Mind you, the prices I was looking at were for ordering individual bags so maybe now knowing the above I should buy in larger quantities...

ormus

no. its the average useage per day.
it doesnt mean that the fire is lit for 24 hrs.

you can cut yer fuel bill down by adding a say few logs to it. ie free logs.

littlesnuggy

ormus wrote: »

no. its the average useage per day.
it doesnt mean that the fire is lit for 24 hrs.

you can cut yer fuel bill down by adding a say few logs to it. ie free logs.

Got some of those already (before I knew we were in a smokeless zone!) Worried about how much smoke they would produce though? The Council ran an article in the local paper last month reminding people that they could get a £1k fine for using "unauthorised fuels"!

smcqis

check out the solid fuel section under utilies. It has a load of information on this sort of stuff

Ben84

If you have mains gas, electricity or pretty much any other fuel available to use in the house, the best advice I can give you if you want to save money is don't use an open fire.

There's about 6 kWh in a Kg of smokeless fuel, making for a price of 8p per kWh if you're paying £12 for a 25 Kg bag.

As prices per kWh go, this is approaching the higher end of the scale anyway. However, how you burn the fuel changes things a lot too. Open fires are really low efficiency, up to 90% of your heat is going up the chimney. You could be paying up to 80p for every single kWh going in to your house by using the open fire. Possibly someone will protest their open fire isn't that bad, so even assuming it's a very generous 50% efficient (open fires this good don't exist), you'd still be paying 16p for every kWh delivered to the house as heat. This very generous estimate of efficiency is still finding it more than electric costs for heating (assume 100% efficiency between kWh counted on meter and heat output to house from heater). So, you'd actually be better off with an electric bar fire or radiator. You'd also save on chimney sweeping, buying all the kit that goes with solid fuel burning (coal store, bucket, etc) and you'd have a lot less work and mess in the house too.

KateLiana27

Have to say I agree with Ben84. Installing an open fire was the only really bad decision we made with our house. It's expensive to run, messy, and due to the wretched external air vent, actually makes the room colder.

Wish I'd gone for a gas one instead. Or even left the ugly 70s electric bar job in place It does look nice though, so we only use it when we have guests.

Sorry, this doesn't really answer your question, but thought I should let you know before you fork out lots on expensive coal bunkers and buckets and the like.

Retiredgasman

I'm getting used to this web site so not sure whether this gets through. Just keep in mind the maths. Homefire is a well known smokeless fuel. It's heat value is 31.1 GJ/Tonne and I have just paid 19 pds for a 50 kilo bag this is the equivalent of 4.41p/kwhr (look at your gas/electric bill and relate it) BUT if you shove the fuel on an open fire you'll be lucky to see 30% in the room - or 70% goes to warm the birds up the chimney. A real cost of 7.5p to you. Buy yourself a decent solid fuel stove and you will see around 65% into the room or a useful heat cost 6p. Get a decent natural gas fire and you'll feel 80% of the heat and the fuel commodity price is cheaper to start off with and it's more controllable.