How are wood burners better?

wilfred3

Does the chimney have to be lined for a wood burner and if so is it from the bottom up so many metres or from the top so many metres down?

Also, I live in a Victorian house with a room and hearth above, will it give warmth to the room directly above me?

Greenfires

The chimney only HAS to be lined if it's unsound or leaking (there's a possibility of fumes leaking into the neighbouring property or other rooms in your own house - which is a bad thing obviously!

Having said that, fitting a liner will almost always give better performance with the stove, and will also rule out a number of potential future problems with the existing chimney. That's "potential" by the way, not "certain"

There may be a small heat gain in higher rooms - but the idea of a stove is that you're getting the majority of the heat into the room it's in - not sending it up the chimney which is the case with an open fire. The hearth above, and the chimney above it, will have no connection at all with the one serving the stove downstairs.

If you do end up with a liner - it always goes from the stove flue all the way to the chimney.

wilfred3

If you have chimneys on the same side of the house, do you need to have each chimney swept? Surely, if they are all on the same side of the house, the brush or vacuum automatically does them all, if cleaning from the ground floor room?

martinthebandit

wilfred3 wrote: »

If you have chimneys the same side of the house, do you need to have each chimney swept? Surely, if they are all on the same side of the house, the brush or vacuum automatically does them all, if cleaning from the ground floor room?

Each open fire on each floor will (or should) have its own flue although all the flues may run inside the same chimney.

If you count the number of chimney pots there are at the top, that's how many separate flues run up the chimney.

Greenfires

Martin is spot on. Each fireplace in the building will have its own dedicated passage up through the chimney stack, and its own pot on top.

You should get the flue you want to use swept before installing the stove, or sticking a liner down it. As well as removing existing deposits from the chimney - it will also ensure that the flue is clear from top to bottom. There's often only a single skin of brick (feathers) separating the individual flues, and these feathers can sometimes collapse. I had one last week in fact - chimney seemed fine and had a reasonable draught - but there was an internal collapse about 20 feet up - just a pile of loose bricks jammed up the chimney.