Bio Ethanol Fireplace

redrobbie

Dear All,

I am a first time user but need to make savings!

My first point of call is that I'm interested in purchasing a bi ethanol fire place. Our central heating isn't the best, and windows do need repalcing however we can't afford to do that yet and currently we're using electric heaters to top up heating in living room.

Although this probably wouldn't be the best effective way of heating, i dont have chimney breasts and want to at least replace the 1kW electric heaters that I am using now if it would be cheaper to do so.

Greenfires

How much heat does the fireplace put out, and how much does the fuel cost? We had a table centrepiece thing that burned this stuff - you could quite happily wave your hand about in the flames it produced - and the gel to stick in it was several quid a bottle. They may be more intended to look nice than actually heat a room.

Robwiz

Bioethanol fireplaces look lovely but aren't a cost-effective heating method. They are particularly useful in a passivhaus, where the flames look lovely and there's a risk of overheating.

You're probably better off doing all the draught-proofing measures – sealing cracks around doors and windows, hanging heavy curtains, caulking gaps in the floor and skirting before replacing windows.

Gas is the cheapest fuel, so how about installing a gas fire in your main living room? An efficient wood burning stove can get close, but the installation cost is much higher than a gas fire.

A left field alternative would be to install a split air conditioning unit with a high coefficient of performance (COP). Some manufacturers' units have a COP of 5, which means you get 5kW of heat for every unit of electricity consumed. Set to a constant temperature, and with internal doors left open, it would go a long way towards balancing your total heat loss.

redrobbie

The problem is all my chimney breasts and flues are removed including the chimney stack! - wish I hadn't now ;(

Can you provide some info on what exactly a split air conditioning system actually is?

southcoastrgi

these fires are really to look at only, they are worse than useless at heating a room & as others have said bloody expensive to run

Robwiz

redrobbie wrote: »

Can you provide some info on what exactly a split air conditioning system actually is?

Two boxes. One inside which either heats or cools air and blows it round the room. The other box outside which has the fridge parts (compressor and expansion valve) which either warms up the refrigerant (for heating) or cools it down (air conditioning).

For more, try Wikipedia or a search engine.