Wood burner not heating up room?

Peachypies12

Hi, 

Hoping someone can help me please. I moved into a house (1905 Victorian End Terrace) a couple of years ago and recently had a wood burning stove fitted as a lot of people have advised it really warms up the house and reduces the need to put the heating on. My experience is quite the opposite to that! I have found that burning the stove for two hours makes absolutely no difference to the warmth of the (already very cold!) room and am looking for some advice on where I might be going wrong. My first guess is that the room is simply too big? It's two rooms with the wall knocked down so one very large room, typically high ceilings and the original hardwood flooring. There's also a second fire place which isn't bricked up and so I think maybe I'm losing heat here also? But when I have the central heating on, it does retain heat a little bit but with the stove, I only really feel the heat with I'm stood right in front of it. It's a 12kw stove which the installers advised would definitely warm the room up without any problem so I'm wondering if I'm not lighting it correctly? I've watched so many YouTube videos/read lots of instructions on how to light it/keep it going and I *think* I've mastered it but there really isn't enough heat to warrant the cost of getting it installed. I've also tried adding two stove fans but they don't really seem to make a massive difference.  Any advice on how to warm up the room would be greatly appreciated as I'm feeling like I've wasted money getting it fitted.

Attached photos of the size of the room and the other fireplace in comparison to where the stove is. Thanks so much in advance! 

Brie

We had ours in a similar size set up (lounge and dining room with big arch in between) and ours worked fine for heating.  You do need to ensure it's drawing properly & keep the doors closed.  If either fireplace isn't sealed to avoid a draft then that would make a big difference.  We didn't have the second fireplace (lovely wood store btw!) but did have the chimney sealed around the up pipe.

MorningcoffeeIV

It may be you're not using it correctly. Are you closing off the flue outlet sufficiently so all the heat doesn't just go straight the chimney? You want to keep the heat within the woodburner.

victor2

That sounds like a fairly powerful burner, but how well insulated is the property?
I have a smaller log burner and have found a magnetic thermometer which goes on the flue to be very useful. It shows you a good operating temperature range and gives you a feel for when to add logs and/or adjust the vent.
Have you checked that you are also burning logs that are well seasoned and have less than 20% moisture? There's a gadget for that too!

Edit: just noticed you have a TV above the burner. If it was chucking out its rated heat, I would think the TV would suffer...

Nobbie1967

I suspect your house is just not very thermally efficient, high ceilings, wooden (suspended?) floor, open chimney breast means the heat is escaping as soon as it comes out of the fire, particularly since it is a large room. We have a 5kw in a room half that size without the open chimney breast and going full blast with the vents open burning good dry wood it still take an hour or two to get warm. If the fire is actually operating at 12kw of output you will be getting through an awful lot of wood. It might be that the wood burner is not operating anywhere near its 12kw capacity. How much wood are you using per hour?

FreeBear

I have a 7KW stove, and can warm the entire house up with it...

What I do, is get kindling and the first (small) log burning really well by a combination of having the door cracked open and air vents fully open. Next log goes on, and the door fully shut and the air vent turned down to get a "lazy" flame. Next log goes on as the flames start to disappear. Also have a flue damper closed down by about a quarter.

On a cold day, it can take a while for the room to heat up  - A couple of hours is often typical for me, but then the stove is inset, so there is a huge mass of brickwork to heat. The heat stored in the mass of the chimney breast helps to keep the room warm overnight once the fire dies down.

One comment about your installation - You really need to think twice about mounting the TV above the stove - The rising hot air will drastically shorten the life of the TV and could even cause some of the plastic to melt.

Edit to add - With a room of 7.88m x 3.8m by ~3m high, a 6-7KW stove should me more than adequate. With a 12KW stove, once you get the hang of using it, is going to turn the room in to an oven.

Apodemus

A 12kW wood burner, going full belt should really put out the heat, to the extent that you might find it uncomfortable to be too close to it!  So there is clearly something wrong with the set-up.  A lot of good suggestions in the replies above, but I would add the following queries:

Does the chimney that it sits in have a register plate that the flue liner goes through?  If not perhaps all your heat is just going straight up.

The stove seems to be quite deep into the fireplace recess, so have you tried a stove-top fan?  These are well worth the money and really help spread the heat out into the room.  

Can you feel cold drafts coming in towards the fire when it is lit (perhaps down the other chimney)?  A 12kW stove will need a lot of air for it to burn efficiently and that air has to be coming from somewhere.  Did the installer add a fresh air vent, or is it simply relying on drawing air from within the house?  You could use a candle to see what way the airflow is going at various points around the room.

FreeBear

Apodemus said: Did the installer add a fresh air vent, or is it simply relying on drawing air from within the house?

Unless this stove has an external air feed, a sizeable vent in the wall would be mandated by Building Regulations.

tripled

A log burner doesn't really get going until it has a good bed of embers and the iron is fully warmed up, which can take a couple of hours. By the time it gets to this point all of the vents should be fully closed for the most efficient burn. If the vents are left open, it'll burn the wood inefficiently and most of the heat will go up the chimney.

Your wood burner should have come with a manual which will help you get the most out of it. Judging when to close vents, or perhaps crack them back open again, takes a little trial and error, but can be helped with use of a chimney thermometer. I don't have a thermometer but do have a stove-top fan - no idea if it helps make the stove more efficient or not, but it warms me up if I sit in front of it!

Apodemus

FreeBear said:

Apodemus said: Did the installer add a fresh air vent, or is it simply relying on drawing air from within the house?

Unless this stove has an external air feed, a sizeable vent in the wall would be mandated by Building Regulations.

Indeed, but it looks like there is something not quite right here, so it is perhaps worth checking on this point.  Also, I wonder if the installer might have considered the other open chimney to constitute an adequate air vent?  

Peachypies12

Sorry, I don't know how to respond to each comment individually! Thanks so much for your all help, notes below:

@Brie - there's a plate sealing the chimney breast with the wood stove but not the wood store, I have considered getting it sealed as I think I might be losing a considerable amount of heat there! 

@MorningcoffeeIV - Yes I think I'm not using it correctly, I've read so many articles on how to do it properly but I'll persevere, hopefully practice makes perfect! 

@victor2 - Thanks for the suggestion of getting a thermometer, I have read about them but wasn't sure how helpful they would be but I think it might be worth a go! Logs wise, I've got kiln dried ones (ready to burn) from B&M but a colleague did mention there's a slight difference between buying quality wood and ones they've bought from a petrol station? I hadn't thought there was a huge difference but maybe somewhere else I'm going wrong! Re the TV, I had asked the installers if it would be an issue and they told me no... in my trusting nature I just assumed their word was correct but a couple of people have flagged this since! 

@Nobbie1967 - Yes I agree, it isn't very well insulated - on particularly cold days you can see your breath!! Really good to know it takes you one to two hours to warm your room up, maybe I was naive to think it would take a similar time to warm up mine... I use 2 logs and they roughly burn for an hour. Do you leave your vents open for more heat? I've read leaving them open burns through wood faster and is less efficient but just thinking maybe I'll try keeping the vents open for a few hours just until it starts warming up and then close the vents (if I can ever get it to warm up!) once I've reached a constant, warm temp in the room?

@FreeBear - Thanks for the step by step, I'll give this a go! Your edit gives me reassurance that it might just be down to human error which is causing it to not warm up effectively and hope is not all lost Noted re: the TV, not sure whether the installers were quiet this month and just told me what I wanted to hear to get the job as I had told them I didn't want to move the TV! 

@Apodemus - Ahhh interesting! So at the moment I'm sitting in front of the stove for warmth and it's just 'toasty' which makes me think it's definitely me and not the room (which could also be contributing to it!) Not sure what a fresh air vent is or where it would be (sorry!) there is a vent to the outside on the ajoining wall if that's what you mean? Here I thought getting a wood burning stove was as simple as burning some logs and all my winter shivering would be solved!! If it makes any difference, when the installation happened, they tested it and smoke came out from the other fireplace so they had to 'cap' it? Not sure if that is anything. 

@tripled - Thanks so much! Think I'm learning that I'll need to have much more practice as I've only actually tried lighting it about 4/5 times - I did read it's like an art so more practice is definitely needed! A thermometer has been mentioned twice here, think that's my next purchase! I have two fans which I kind of think helps a bit, but not sure if I'm so desperate for them to work and the installation to have not been a waste of money that it's a psychological warmth I'm feeling haha.