Should I invest in a wood burner?

whiskywhisky

I know there are many variations that will give me the answer to the subject title (i.e. usuage, insulation, current heating system) but am hoping someone can give me a decent guess!

We have recently bought a very cold 1950s house, currently no cavity or loft insulation but will be installing shortly.In the house are 2 adults and 2 young (aged 4 + 6) kids. The combi boiler system is very old (around 50 years) but working and some of the house is not double glazed, with the heating on it takes the chill off but defo not make you feel warm. We will in a few years (hopefully around 3) do an extension to the house, when we will replace the heating and all plumbing. We cannot afford to do much now anyway, therefore are hoping we can live with everything for a few years.

The living room has a unused chimney, the chimney breast is in a garage as this is built-onto the house. In a few years we have no idea what the extension will be, this most likely will include building up from the garage and knocking out the chimney breast.

-So thinking that if installed due to future extension we may only use the wood burner for a few years, do you feel it is worth the investment?
- With the garage the other side of the wall, will I need a vertical flue up the chimney or are there cheaper ones that can go into the garage the other side?
- The garage also has the gas meter, or should I ask a gas engineer whether we can have a gas pipe installed from the garage into the wall and out the other side to the chimney opening and then buy a gas heater?

Sorry for the long story and if I made some obvious mistakes! never ever used a wood burner before but looking at ways to save money!

savemoney

Buying and installing a wood burner purely to save money will almost certainly not a reason for having one unless you have a free/cheap supply of fuel. It can cost a few grand having one and then installed if you need chimney liner. Plus like other fuels wood and coal are all going up as more people get multi fuel stove and or source gets depleted price increases.

They are nice to have I have one but dont be fooled into thinking its cheap it is anything but. It can also been messy having one even with logs you have to clean the stove/glass and have chimney swept at least once a year

You also need somewhere to store the fuel too I have a whole wall of a large garage for that and keep door open when weather is nice to dry seasoned logs

I paid over 2k for mine 4 years ago with fitting and I spend around £150 on wood plus I still need GHC on when its very cold it wont heat the whole house much on a very cold night much. I still get gas bills a year over £622 and that's just heating and cooking. The £150 on wood would not last a whole Oct/March either I alternate between GHC and log burner, so I spend almost £800 on heating/cooking a year

whiskywhisky

savemoney - thanks, totally did not consider that like everything coal/wood is also costing more.

Also just looked into it a bit more - my boiler is not 50 years old (just looks it) but I think more like around 20, it is an ideal mexico floor standing unit.

savemoney

If it was a choice between GHC and wood burner I got for GHC everytime. I only got mine because in dining room where pc is its too cold and rad isnt big enough to heat dining room and kitchen which are open plan. I wanted to be a little bit more green too and had a empty space where it look nice. You see a lot of wood burner on house programs now given impression is all nice and cosy well to some degree its nice and cosy but they never show you need to clean stove or where to store fuel. They are much cleaner than a open fire and much more efficient too

whiskywhisky

savemoney - thanks. So in my situation where the rads are not "man" enough and we dont want to and cannot afford to change now. Would you rather go for a gas fire in the chimney area? as mentioned the gas pipe may be fairly easy for an engineer to install but I guess it will also require the flue etc.

hethmar

Id defo go for the gas fire. A radiant one will do the job well for the few years you are likely to use it. Its instant, you can switch it on without a lot of fussing about and cleaning out which is not what you will want to be doing if you want to warm the room quickly for the kids in the morning or whatever.

Get the gas fire sorted. The flue liner for a gas fire is much cheaper than for a woodburner by the way.

savemoney

If you like the appeal of a stove you can also get a gas fired stove and they are meant to be very efficient although probably more costly that say a bog standard gas fire but you soon get money back if its efficient compared with say an living flame gas fire

http://www.stovax.com/

I was tempted to have on in living room as I have a open fire which isnt used but I have such a lovely fire surround I probably have to get rid of it so now I just use it for display

suki1964

if you have mains gas - then go for mains gas

If you read through the posts here you will see that people on here sating that are "cheap " to run, either have their own wood supply - or are on LPG or OIL

You just cannot compare to gas


Get a gas fire for your sitting room and let the CH keep the rest of the house above freezing till the time you have enough money to overhaul your complete heating

whiskywhisky

Thanks - will take all comments on board and start looking at Gas heaters.

rich_jtg

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but as an open fire owner, could I please ask whether a stove is generally cleaner to use?

Our fire seems to generate quite a bit of extra dust when used - does the 'sealed' nature of a stove reduce this?

suki1964

Still loads of dust from loading and cleaning out