Wood burning stove

ispookie666

Hi
We moved into out 4 bed detached house a few months back. The house gets cold -especially the laminate flooring when the outside is cold. I have tried with rugs and big carpets!!

I am thinking of getting a wood burning stove - I don't have a chimney - so will need a flue through the wall.

My question is Is running a wood burning stove expensive? Can that be used as the main source of heat for the house?

ps: loft insulation needs to be sorted out as well.

ey_up

It costs us £50 a year to run our stove and that's to have flu swept. That is only because we have not exhausted our free wood supply. Without that it would be cheaper to run gas.

rustyboy21

You are going to have heart failure when you get the price of installation, due to you not having a chimney to use ! You will have to go externally all the way up the side of the house, past roof height with insulated twin wall rigid flue pipe.


Expect costs around £2-3k for this before buying the stove !
To give you an idea on costs, work on 200mm diameter pipework and work on 12 m height of house. It is £200 for 1m then you have to add in all the wall clamps, terminal for the top, bends, inspection ports etc. Not going to be cheap and that is before you start talking about installation and buying the proper seasoned wood you will need to ensure the guarantee on the pipework stays effective.


http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_burning_stoves/Poujoulat-flue.html


Be cheaper to buy a balanced flue gas stove, which doesn't need to go up the wall, or fitting more radiators, maybe under floor heating.

ispookie666

Thanx guys for the replies

I did think the outlay would come to low end of 4k and top end of 7.5K.

Doing the math - just to break even on the heating the lounge with electric oil filled radiator on top of the central heating it would take 20 years. Unless I switch off the central heating by which I might be able to break even in 8 years.

PS: not including the cost of seasoned firewood.

rustyboy21

If you are looking at an outlay of that amount, you could do a lot with a design led balanced flue gas stove. Your outlay on the one in the link below, would work out at around £2300 for the stove ,about £300 for the flue kit and about £500 ( if that) to install. It is all remote control, and can also be operated on LPG.


Really nice product, I want one for my house !


http://www.faberfireplaces.co.uk/site/default.asp?land=uk&subject=product&keuze=Gashaarden&categorie=Freestanding&naam=Jelling

Ectophile

A wood burner is unlikely to heat the whole house unless you get one with a back boiler and connect it up to a central heating system. It may well be able to make one floor toasty warm, though.

As noted by previous posters, installation can be seriously expensive.

If you have a supply of free wood, then the only cost is having the stove swept, perhaps once a year if you use good quality seasoned wood.

If you haven't got free wood, then a pickup truck full of logs should cost about £60 - £70. That will last me a year of occasional use. You could easily get through double that if you use the stove a lot.

Firewood is generally cheaper per kilowatt hour than most fuels other than mains gas.

markmead

you can possibly heat up at least few rooms, we had old fireplace with old chimney luckily in the middle of the house, I bought a cheap Gallery Firefox stove, they are pretty decent quality and cheap! Because the chimney is right in the middle we installed heat vents going out to rooms around they chimney (upstairs and downstairs) so it gives a bit of heat everywhere. love it.

SG27

ispookie666 wrote: »

PS: not including the cost of seasoned firewood.

Which unfortunatly is not cheap.

If you have gas CH that will always be cheaper

Gers

We've just a woodburner installed in our 'new' home. Nothing as complicated as what you need doing as there is an existing chimney. No mains gas here in the wilds of woolly!

I love the stove. Opted not to have it running the hot water or heaters as it seemed rather complex and would mean having the stove burning all the time, even in summer, to get hot water.

Our stove is a WoodWarm 5kw and by jove it throws out some heat. :eek: really toasty. Got a good local supply of seasoned beech and just had a tree taken down so that's filled half the wood store - labelled it to make sure it's not used til 2016.

Hope it works out for you.

thebaldwindowfitter

my logburner a mendip 5 was installed complete with sandstone hearth in modern property with twin wall outside i tiled behind the fire myself cost of fitting stove by hetas installer smidge under 2k .I did it because i get plenty of free wood it does heat the downstairs and upstairs to a degree if you open windows upstairs it helps draw heat upstairs .So far since february ive spent £55 on hardwood logs which ive cut and chopped my self buthas given me an 18 month supply once dried

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Our house is only heated by stoves, they do throw out some heat but can be expensive to run if you can't get free wood, we mainly burn coal (about £380 a ton for smokeless here), the last lot of split hardwood logs was just over £100 for a trailer load but if you run the stove all day you'll burn through wood very quickly.

Burning unseasoned wood can cause a build up of tar in the flue which can catch fire plus you need 4 or 5 times the amount of wood for the same heat output as the energy is being used to evaporate the water.

You can get a gadget on Amazon to check the moisture content of wood, you're looking for 20% or lower and any genuine sellers of seasoned logs shouldn't have a problem with them being checked before buying.

If you can afford it a stove is a great thing to have in the house, you can also get a range of different underlays for laminate flooring or if the floor is suspended could put insulation under it which might also help with the cold.