Open fire back boiler for heating house. Experiences please.

ladyrider260

Hello all.
We are looking at moving to a property in a rural area. It has an immersion for hot water and an open fire with back boiler for radiators. I'd love to hear about experience with efficiency, cost, maintenance etc please.
It's a 2 bed semi.
I've a gut feeling that we will be paying out almost double in energy costs as it seems like an expensive and high maintenance way to heat a home.

Thankyou

Marktheshark

Depends on how clever you are.
Ask neighbours for tips and fuel and log supplies.

I had a house with one for a few years and it had no Gas supply.
Around £10 of coal a week and one sack of logs a week at £5 meant the house was piping hot morning to night with lots of hot water (enough for 2 baths a night) and piping hot radiators in winter in every room.
A old fashioned kettle meant piping hot drinks using no electric.

could you run Gas central heating for £60 a month in Winter ?
I would say not in a large house.
The bonus is having a real fire is just the pinnacle of room heating, dry warm heat on a winters night.

It's all down to getting the right fuel at the right price, logs and coal combined make a good hot fire that burns for hours.

ladyrider260

That's great, thanks Mark. Funnily enough I went back to my childhood with the tin bath in front of the fire! Unfortunately the water is heated by an electric immersion.

highrisklowreturn

The best heating system there is. Just had gas installed for a 2 bed terrace - looking at around 160-200 a month in gas and coal (cost is mostly gas at 30/40 a week), up from 80-120 (max) for smokeless coal per month.


The trick is to find a petcoke supplier and get the bags for under £7. One bag lasted me two days, so £3.35 a day for water and radiators. Then get a source of free wood to top it up - if you look hard enough you'll find one. Oh, and living room used to be boiling hot before this bloody gas nonsense, and my annual maintenance consisted of sweeping the chimney myself and replacing a firebar at 3.50, compared to 60 quid to service a gas boiler, and I expect 200-600 breakdown charges a few years from now.