Wood burning stove?

Ectophile

A wood burner is also a handy backup when your gas boiler goes wrong over Christmas, and the plumber's on holiday until January.


If I keep doors open, I can heat the whole downstairs of the house, and at least take the chill off upstairs as well.

CakeCrusader

silverwhistle wrote: »

It does seem to be house and person dependent though. I keep the door to the lounge shut as it warms up, then open the door to the dining room and then the hall. I never had the central heating on at all last winter apart from an initial test and on frost setting when I was away for a couple of weeks.


Even when I was working in my 3rd bedroom/office I didn't have the heating on upstairs..

I can't do that. At most it will heat the room above by half a degree. It's a small stove.

silverwhistle

Ah! As I was saying every house (and stove) is different. Mine is rated 5kw and can get the room so hot we're stripping down and opening windows! From a base of (say) 16 to (say) 24/25. A little fan on the top helps move the warm air around.

savemoney

Mines a 8kWh in through lounge and heat can be 25-26c in dining room where it is it does heat downstairs mostly but upstairs probably only takes a few degrees

Davesnave

The variables between stoves, the flues they're connected to, the whole house structure and the quality of the logs will mean vast differences in individual experiences.

We get a better experience from our 5kW stove than we did from the old 8kW thing, but other factors mentioned above have also changed, so it may be impossible, even in a single property, to pin down exactly what proportions of the extra warmth are attributable to each one.

SonOf

I would not buy a house with one installed.

They are a bit like decking, Belfast sinks and other fads. Soon go out of fashion when the downsides are lived with.

Our house has had fireplaces for 200 years. When is that fad going out fashion?
It surely has to be situation-specific.

Don't underestimate the mess and the dust they create

We are not seeing any noticeable dust caused by the fire away from the fireplace. It requires you to get the dustpan and brush out around the fireplace and you have to empty it once a week (frequency may depend on your stove - one of our three is used 12 hours a day, every day in winter and that needs emptying once a week)

The heat doesn't spread any further than one room, so if you're spending all day in your living room it's fine.

We have three 8kw burners. One is in a hallway with a staircase and 3 doorways to other rooms, the other two in separate lounges with a single access. The lounge chimneys have the old cast iron fireplaces in the bedrooms.

The lounge fires only really heat a single room and the bedroom above.
The hallway fire heats much of the house because it has good airflow in its location. It is that one we fire up every day in the cold. It wouldn't be enough by itself during the really cold weeks as the house has poor insulation but it does delay the central heating being needed until later in the year and turning it off earlier in Spring. We use noticeably less oil (for the central heating) with the burner going than we do with it off.

So, the effectiveness of a stove and how much it heats will really depend on your house and where you put it. We are getting a 4th burner put in one of the barns which I use as an office. We have hot/cold aircon in there but the main reason for doing it is the ambience.

Finally, we get relatively frequent power cuts. 4 this year already. Usually no more than an hour. Most several minutes. One of the negatives of living in the countryside. So, the fires give us continuity of heat should there be a longer period of power loss.