off grid ..wood burner...what would you choose

tightwadess

If you were off grid for gas in an electric only older property and were looking for a multi fuel/wood burner forgetting costs and output ... which one would you choose and why

Gloomendoom

Bit of an odd question. Surely being off grid is not relevant.

What do you want it to do? Heat one room, heat the whole house, provide hot water? Do you want to use it for cooking?

tightwadess

Gloomendoom wrote: »

Bit of an odd question. Surely being off grid is relevant.

What do you want it to do? Heat one room, heat the whole house, provide hot water? Do you want to use it for cooking?

Sorry meant forgetting costs and output of wood burner. In other words if cost of buying stove isn't an issue regardless of price what would you choose. It's to heat an open plan kitchen diner hallway and stair case and hopefully radiate up to the two bedrooms . Being able to cook on could be a side option but not essential .

Gloomendoom

Output would come into it. You would have to work out how many KW you need to heat the space, just like you would if you were designing a standard central heating system. That will narrow down your options.

Skulls

Whichever fire you go for, try and get a cold air feed type. These save so much more than even I thought. My personal choice has been a Burley, these go from about 4kw up to 12kw. My Burley Holywell 5kw replaced a Villager AL 16kw (non cold feed) A big factor is knowing how to use a log burner correctly. Don't do the usual man thing of getting the biggest kw output!

tightwadess

Skulls wrote: »

Whichever fire you go for, try and get a cold air feed type. These save so much more than even I thought. My personal choice has been a Burley, these go from about 4kw up to 12kw. My Burley Holywell 5kw replaced a Villager AL 16kw (non cold feed) A big factor is knowing how to use a log burner correctly. Don't do the usual man thing of getting the biggest kw output!

It's this the cold air feed that connects directly into the rear/base of the fire rather than an air brick/feed directly into the room...thank you

Skulls

Yes. You use cold air from outside for the fire not the air in your room that you have already paid to heat up. Because of this is stops a lot of draughts also. If the fire is using the air in the room it needs to be replaced by sucking in non heated air from outside the room, therefore causing draughts.

tightwadess

Cheers thanks for the heads up

Davesnave

Skulls wrote: »

Yes. You use cold air from outside for the fire not the air in your room that you have already paid to heat up. Because of this is stops a lot of draughts also. If the fire is using the air in the room it needs to be replaced by sucking in non heated air from outside the room, therefore causing draughts.

This is great in theory, but in many properties the fire is in the centre of a solid-floored house and getting the pipe in can be tricky.

I'm stuck like that and I don't even have an outside wall in the room where the wood burner is sited. My solution of taking a pipe from the eaves, breaking into a redundant clay flue and bringing it down that was rejected by all the 'experts' I spoke to. Short of digging two floors up, in that respect, I'm stuffed.

tightwadess

Davesnave wrote: »

This is great in theory, but in many properties the fire is in the centre of a solid-floored house and getting the pipe in can be tricky.

I'm stuck like that and I don't even have an outside wall in the room where the wood burner is sited. My solution of taking a pipe from the eaves, breaking into a redundant clay flue and bringing it down that was rejected by all the 'experts' I spoke to. Short of digging two floors up, in that respect, I'm stuffed.

Oh gosh that is a bit complicated....I'm lucky in that the stove will be going into an old large fireplace with concrete floors where an old large Rayburn cooker used to stand the chimney stack is still intact and fortunately although it's on an inside wall there is a small cupboard/ room between the rear of this wall and before the next room it houses lots of water pipes and the mains water in feed pipe and one side of this little room is an outside wall so I think it's absolutely perfect for a stove with direct air supply and the pipes should be well out of view and un obstructed .