solid Fuel burner and back boiler advice please.

deeksofdoom

I'm thinking of having a solid fuel stove and back boiler installed in my house.

I currently have 2 open fires in the house one of which I don't use. we have oil central heating, its 3 zone heating - upstains , downstairs and water.

I'm just trying to understand what my requirements are at the moment before I get a few quotes from plumbers etc...

The house is approximately 1600 sqare foot, we have 15 rads they are all 'Double panel with fins', I was doing a bit of googling this morning and have calculated my heating requirements for all these rads to be approximately 19Kw thats not including heating the water in the tank (I'm assuming I only have a single coil tank, haven't looked at it yet)

The room I intend to put the stove in is a good size room 4.2m X 5.8m X 2.5m by my googling calculations it requires 2.5 to 3KW to heat. Now the room is on the gable of the house and it has 3 windows and a large door leading out to a patio, so I'm guessing that all that double glazing will increase my heat loss. However some of the boilers I have been looking at have an output to the room of 5.5kw to 8Kw - would the heat be unbearable in the room with that size of output, if i was to reduce the fire in the stove wouldn't it have a knock on effect on the heating output to the rads.

Should i go for a more Kw output rather than less?

how much kw would it take to heata tank of water?

What kind of questions should i be asking the heating engineers when I get them in?

What is the longest draw from the boiler to the hot water tank, mine is 9m is that too much?

wrightk

i can only really answer the last question and the answer is yes you will have major problems. Ours is only 3m and the tank takes ages to heat. weve just had a complete repipe and the plumber commented on how far away the tank is from the stove. ideally it should be as close as possible to the stove.

Our stove is 13kw and i always maintain it is far too large for our house (3 bed, 6 rads). To get the heat really kicking out of it i have to drive it really hard, and to do that means filling the firebox (which is gigantic) with coal, which is very expensive. So make sure your installer gets it right. Ours is 3kw to room, but luckily its located in the kitchen so is not unbearable

gamston

i've got a system simaler to yours
15 rads, 3 zones, oil boiler,
we have a stove with a boiler around 9kw fitted to the central heating system, it never really gets hot, our old 6kw all metal (no glass doors) stove with boiler, fitted to same system would radiate heat all around downstairs when i run that, but this one never builds up that kind of heat
a stove on its own would find it hard to heat 15 rads,
what i do is run the oil boiler 6 am to 8 am, them 5pm to 10pm and we lit the stove when we get in 3pm or all day at weekends and keep it going till we go to bed
running like that i use a 8x8x8 shed full of wood + about 10x 25kg bags of coal from late summer to spring as well as the oil

vandici

Our heating system is a Charnwood Cove 11b multifuel stove linked to a 300lt thermal store and it works really well. I have been using it through this winter and it has performed well. The stove it self is in a 6m x 5m room with an open plan stairway upto our 4x4m bedroom, it will heat this area to 20 deg easily. The hot water from the stove goes to the thermal store and is distributed to the radiators on 2 seperate zones or DHW on another zone. Apart from the heat to the living room & bedroom the system provides heat to 4 other radiators approximately 4KW in total. The heat in the rooms powered by the rads is warm NOT hot, certainly not hot like heat from my parents oil boiler system! But this its acceptable to me. Install costs are quite expensive, I paid £5500 for the stove, flue, thermal store, install and commisioning inc vat. In terms of running costs, it costs me £100 for 5 weeks worth of coal (10bags), this is lighting the stove in the evenings only and keeping alight through the weekend. Before Xmas I was using waste wood and that used roughly 15kg of wood per night. If you go for a system like this it may pay to fit a thermal store, that way you can link the oil boiler and the stove together, giving you a backup to either system. If the condition of your oil boiler is newish I would be inclined to fit just a stove without the back boiler into you main living area. Hope this helps.