wood burning stove and new boiler

blogger57

alleycat` wrote: »

The stove i have is "just" 5KW.

We're thinking about a 5kW wood burning stove but wondering about the wood storage. I would be interested to know how much wood do you use on a typical day and what space do you use for storing wood inside the house?

highrisklowreturn

If storing wood indoors I normally just leave it in the bucket. Unless you have a garage or a lay to wood isn't a brilliant option. Coal is easier to store, warmer, but much dirtier. If it rains and goes through the bag it drips everywhere and ruins carpets. The dust and soot are also worse.


I'd be interested in hearing what the typical daily fuel consumption is for those with boiler stoves - I'm not working and getting through a bag every 2 daysie 25kg for a 6kw stove.

alleycat`

blogger57 wrote: »

We're thinking about a 5kW wood burning stove but wondering about the wood storage. I would be interested to know how much wood do you use on a typical day and what space do you use for storing wood inside the house?

One side of my house has a "dead end" that is fenced off.
The area is about 6 foot wide by about 30 foot long.
I've built a couple of wood stores out of old pallets, old fence posts, some plywood (for the roof) and a bit of old shed roof felt (that i had in the garage).

My bigger store holds about 1.2 cubic metres of wood (2 of the big builders dumpy bags).
I've basically consumed all of that (i have about 10 logs left).
I've supplemented that with about 8 to 10, 25KG bags of smokeless fuel.

If i was just using wood I'd reckon on needing at least 2.5 cubic metres, possibly even 3 (which i'm considering as i have the space).

That would be just using the stove on a weekday evening and for varying times on a w/e.

I would say that consumption varies a lot depending on how you'd utilise the stove.

The other route, if you have somewhere indoors / dry to store them, would be heat logs of some sort.
The storage requirement for something like that (as they come on a pallet) would be smaller and it might work out more economical but the quality between brands varies quite a lot.

Not sure if that helps or not.

blogger57

Thanks alleycat and highrisklowreturn. It does give me an idea for how much storage space I would need if we used the fire fairly frequently.

We are keen to use wood as we have some available where we are but I wanted to be clear on the likely size of storage area we would need. It's been quite hard to visualise how much wood we would really need but now I can certainly imagine where to put 2-3 cubic metres of (dry) wood.

elantan

Hi all thanks for the info, we went to a stove place and spoke to the guy in charge, he recommends a 9kw stove with a boiler jacket on to heat the water, he also recommended a central heating system using dual fuel, we would have gas being burned until the heat of the wood kicked in then the fire would revert to wood

Does anyone know anything about these systems ?

Also do you spend a lot of time chopping wood? I know that sounds silly but we don't want to be spending every weekend chopping wood if that makes sense ?

The fire we looked at and was told was the right one for us was £1,200 however we would need approx 10 mtrs of flue etc ... This we have been told costs £150 a mtr by the time everything is added on we would then have fitting to be taken into consideration ... This seems like a lot of money but if it worked out better for us then it might be worth it, has anyone for any advice ?

alleycat`

Depends how cold the week is going to be to how much wood i split.

I usually take about an hour on a Saturday morning if the following week is forecast to be a stinker.
If it is fairly mild i'd probably be done in less than 30 minutes.

-

Price for the flue sounds steep.
Assuming it is a twin wall insulated type i'd have thought it should be about 30% cheaper than that.

-

Getting back to basics.
What is your current heating system fuelled by?

elantan

I'm currently gas, we have a very old system ( approx 30 years old) we have a wooden frame type house so can't have cavity wall heating , we have the loft and underfloor insulated ... There is part of me that is very loathe to replace the current system as it is basically trouble free .. The problem is our house is freezing

We have 12 radiators, heating 10 rooms so we were told we need a 35Kw system in gas to replace our current system ( was told it needs to be 35Kw to heat out house)

Just now we are looking at all viable options... There is part of me that fancies the idea of a wood burning system as the gas is expensive and electricity ain't any cheaper

The £150 per metre was what we were quoted by the guy in the stove shop, he said by the time you add all the connector bits etc (and it is going up 10 mtrs outside so needs double insulated or something) we should budget £150 per mtr

If I can give you any more info that may help you u set stand our needs please don't hesitate to ask

Thanks for taking the time to help

alleycat`

If you've got "mains gas" and not LPG then the stove as a "full boiler system" is not going to make sense financially. It'll cost more in outlay, especially as you don't appear to have a "chimney" and the fuel is going to cost more.

Mains gas is still the cheapest fuel to keep your house warm and older boilers are, touch wood, simple reliable beasts. It might be worth looking into how "clean" the system is and if it can be made better with newer radiators but i, like yourself, would be loathe to chuck it out.

My view, for what little it is worth, would be to look at keeping your existing "trouble free" system and try supplement it with a smaller stove that is just standalone. You might even find a gas fire is a better option for you (even though, imho, they are not as nice).

That way you can "boost" your heating with the stove when required and it is much less complicated in terms of something to go wrong.

The sweeps like greenfires and mucky + fitters like hethmar will have a more informed view.

elantan

Hi alley cat,

thanks again for taking the time to answer, i think you are very right in that we shouldnt "fix" what isnt broken tbh

we just know that the heating system wont last forever so was trying to think of alternatives that we could replace them with whilst we are still in control rather than when/if the system breaks down and we need to deal with it as an emergency.

the thing with putting a fire in however, i am not too sure if this will be worth it ( we had hoped so at first but the cost of the flue is very prohibative) to let you understand we have an unusual house in the sense that it is built into the side of a hill, with the living room upstairs and a "downstairs" in the basement, it is classed as a bungalow though ( if that makes any sense at all)

we have a gas fire in the living room which is worse than useless, we bought it not too long after we moved in and paid a fortune for it and the marble fireplace to be fitted. this "fire" gives out little to no heat and has this kinda box thing on the back that draws away any fumes ( and any heat) away from the fire, it also lets lots and lots of cold air in , as i say worse than useless.

this is one of the reasons we were thinking of having a fire downstairs, we were thinking it is a smaller place to heat and we can have a wood burning fire there, we wouldnt need the 9kw if we were just heating the rooms, the 9kw was for having a water jacket on to heat the water system, it also apparently gives us access to a 5% V.A.T charge as opposed to a 20% charge this 5% is also on the fitting and the flue so we thought that might save money.

the problem with this idea of just the fire would mean we would still need to have a big flue due to the flue needing to go outside the wall and i think it is 2.8 mtr regulation above the house... it basically would go out and onto the highest part of the house so would need to be 10 mtrs approx, the flue for the wood/gas boiler system would only need to be roughly 5 mtrs due to the position we could put it in.

basically just having the fire would be

9KW fire £1,200 ( with tax reduction and boiler jacket)
flue £127.5 a mtr ( due to the reduction in tax)
and fitting with 5% tax
so £2,475 plus fitting ( he told us to expect to pay around £4.5-£5k, but surely £2k just to fit a fire is an awful lot?)

which would heat the downstairs and the water

as opposed to

unsure about the fire ( he did mention something in the high hundreds ... but i would be lying if i said i remember how much)
fitting ( with full tax)
flue at £150 a mtr

again i didnt get a full price for this

just thinking though for somewhere between £4.5-£5k is an awful lot to pay to heat one part of the house

is this normal for people to pay ?

elantan

will try and work out how big the radiators in each room needs to be in order to heat the house right ...

we could change radiators and tbh was thinking of changing some anyway, we have 5 new radiators but could do with changing the other 7 ... the problem there would be, would putting bigger radiators not put an added strain on the current system? it is struggling to cope as it is, yes it is working and yes it does heat the house eventually, but it takes a good few hours just to reach any sort of decent tempreture, our rooms with heating on tend to reach approx 17 degrees, we occasionally make it to 18 or even 19 degrees, but that is with the heating on for a good while and not letting the place cool down from before, i think if we took the downstairs three radiators off of the system it would manage much better, but then we are left with the whole ... how do we heat the downstairs ...

we have had a few people in now to give us advice but we can tell they just have £ signs in their eyes, they all claim to be the best etc ... the guy last night said for our house the dream scenario would be 10 Kw P.V cells to heat both house and water, with a Rointe used for heating the house, our house is not south facing and whilst i believe yes we would still get some daylight... i dont know if i think we would get enough to run the house.

his other suggestion was a 35Kw gas system that wasnt a combi, it was the same as what we have ie: heats the water separately, and tbh i dont think a combi system would work for our house, and maybe we do need a 35Kw system but which one to choose? i want something that is going to be reliable for a long long long time ( 30 years so far and going with the present system) and that wont break down... my friend has a new boiler that costs her a forutne every year to get fixed, so far in the 11 years we have lived here we have paid £20 to have a pump replaced and have a gas registered service every year....

can you understand my confusion and relutance to be ripped off