Wood Burners and Installation

[gangzoom]

Bill said:

This. Lovely to have but a luxury.

Ours was an absolute pain to install, added probably nearly 4 weeks of delay into the build. The builder kept on trying to get us to forget it and get gas/electric instead.

Total cost was about £4.5K with the stove, only been used once since we moved in September, absolute luxury, worth every penny if you can afford it.

[andy43]

Going straight through the wall at 45 degrees and then up all using 6” twin wall flue is the way to do it with no existing chimney. Bonus with it being external is any problems are easy to spot plus it’s a simple install once you’re through the wall so that should keep the price down as there’s no flashing kit or roofing work. Down side is wind - you’ll need a good few brackets!

[loskie]

what about all the wasted heat outside?

[andy43]

loskie said:

what about all the wasted heat outside?

Ideally for looks and minimal heat loss it’d be up inside the room, up through the ceiling and joists, up inside the first floor room then into the loft and out of the roof tiles after structural engineers approval for joist and rafter mods but cost wise that doesn’t bear thinking about.
The twin wall gets slightly warm to the touch but that’s about it in terms of heat loss for the external route.

[ATG]

loskie said:

They are lovely things to have. I have two (don't use both at the same time) but do use as a primary heat as much as I can.

For a change I bought a bag of peat nuggets on Saturday. Burns lovely
https://www.peatheat.co.uk/

Burning peat isn't really a great plan from an environmental standpoint. It's a pity that a traditional way of harvesting and consuming fuel needs to stop, but it really does need to.

[Chumley.mouse]

ATG said:

Burning peat isn't really a great plan from an environmental standpoint. It's a pity that a traditional way of harvesting and consuming fuel needs to stop, but it really does need to.

What you fail to see here , as many others do , is that not everyone is bothered about the environment. You might be ? But there are many that are not.

I’ve never tried any peat ? Might give it a try.

[loskie]

ATG said:

loskie said:

They are lovely things to have. I have two (don't use both at the same time) but do use as a primary heat as much as I can.

For a change I bought a bag of peat nuggets on Saturday. Burns lovely
https://www.peatheat.co.uk/

Burning peat isn't really a great plan from an environmental standpoint. It's a pity that a traditional way of harvesting and consuming fuel needs to stop, but it really does need to.

Could be that NON ESSENTIAL use of the internet, ICE cars, buying clothes to be fashionable, going for a drive, flying to a holiday, having the lights on etc etc etc all use resources too.

Is the use of hardwood logs any different and heaven forbid kiln dried ones. That concept is crazy. Kiln drying using "renewable energy" that people get a tariff to generate. Those logs being shrink wrapped on pallets, imported even.


Yes the list is endless.

Anyway: Back to the peat. It's quite nice. I paid a crazy £14,99 for the bag from the local petrol station but looking online local garden centres and other suppliers can be around £9. The bag seems to be lasting well. A lot nicer than coal that's for sure.

[dickymint]

Bill said:

dickymint said:

Not doubting you one bit but I couldn't see the problem from that photo and no explanation - New roof....ouch !! Was it signed off?

The colour of the trusses is a giveaway.

Fookin ell just had another look - i thought that was just shadows off the lighting !!

[Acorn1]

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Having second thoughts now as I thought they would be cheap to run.

I see loads on line for between £500- £700, is it the installation that will ramp it up to £4k?

[trickywoo]

Acorn1 said:

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Having second thoughts now as I thought they would be cheap to run.

I see loads on line for between £500- £700, is it the installation that will ramp it up to £4k?

Quality twin wall flue will be in the region of £1k on top of the burner. Plus for the brackets and cap. Installation is also expensive, surprisingly so for what it is but that's the same for any trade these days.

[trickywoo]

andy43 said:

loskie said:

what about all the wasted heat outside?

Ideally for looks and minimal heat loss it’d be up inside the room, up through the ceiling and joists, up inside the first floor room then into the loft and out of the roof tiles after structural engineers approval for joist and rafter mods but cost wise that doesn’t bear thinking about.
The twin wall gets slightly warm to the touch but that’s about it in terms of heat loss for the external route.

Just to back that up I have about 1m of single flue on mine before it goes twin wall. The single flue will run at around 200C for hours and the hottest I've seen the twin wall is 50C at the point where it joins. Any distance up it would be pretty much ambient so you aren't losing very much if you decide to run it eternally as internal would likely need twin wall anyway, if only to keep the flue temp up.

I haven't researched it myself but our installer said every meter of single flue gives about another 1kw of heat in the room and the same for a bend. When you see installs with twin wall straight off the top of the stove that's where heat is getting wasted.

[ATG]

Chumley.mouse said:

ATG said:

Burning peat isn't really a great plan from an environmental standpoint. It's a pity that a traditional way of harvesting and consuming fuel needs to stop, but it really does need to.

What you fail to see here , as many others do , is that not everyone is bothered about the environment. You might be ? But there are many that are not.

I’ve never tried any peat ? Might give it a try.

Ultimately I don't care whether there are some who don't care about the environment in very much the same way that I don't care if someone thinks robbing banks is OK. The environment is a shared responsibility. If some people can't see that, it's a pity, but it is no get out clause for them. We're not talking about relatively minor stuff like whether a landscape is picturesque or not. We're currently talking about climate change that is going to have a big impact on global sea levels and weather, sufficient to disrupt food production, cause a great deal of migration and require a huge amount of investment in infrastructure to mitigate.

[andy43]

trickywoo said:

andy43 said:

loskie said:

what about all the wasted heat outside?

Ideally for looks and minimal heat loss it’d be up inside the room, up through the ceiling and joists, up inside the first floor room then into the loft and out of the roof tiles after structural engineers approval for joist and rafter mods but cost wise that doesn’t bear thinking about.
The twin wall gets slightly warm to the touch but that’s about it in terms of heat loss for the external route.

Just to back that up I have about 1m of single flue on mine before it goes twin wall. The single flue will run at around 200C for hours and the hottest I've seen the twin wall is 50C at the point where it joins. Any distance up it would be pretty much ambient so you aren't losing very much if you decide to run it eternally as internal would likely need twin wall anyway, if only to keep the flue temp up.

I haven't researched it myself but our installer said every meter of single flue gives about another 1kw of heat in the room and the same for a bend. When you see installs with twin wall straight off the top of the stove that's where heat is getting wasted.

Same here - I have a magnetic flue thermometer on the single wall from the stove - that runs around 200 whereas I can rest my hand on the twinwall that's above it.
Mine was bought used from ebay - Selkirk 6"/150mm ID - all stainless, now been fitted around 15 years with no problems although I'd admit we probably went overboard on the number of brackets outside. For hetas it needs to be new and supplied by the fitter I think.

[ATG]

loskie said:

Could be that NON ESSENTIAL use of the internet, ICE cars, buying clothes to be fashionable, going for a drive, flying to a holiday, having the lights on etc etc etc all use resources too.

Is the use of hardwood logs any different and heaven forbid kiln dried ones. That concept is crazy. Kiln drying using "renewable energy" that people get a tariff to generate. Those logs being shrink wrapped on pallets, imported even.


Yes the list is endless.

Anyway: Back to the peat. It's quite nice. I paid a crazy £14,99 for the bag from the local petrol station but looking online local garden centres and other suppliers can be around £9. The bag seems to be lasting well. A lot nicer than coal that's for sure.

There are many ways of wasting resources, for sure, but peat really is a bad one to use. Allowing peat to accumulate is a really good natural way of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and locking it in the ground for geologically significant periods of time. If you're burning firewood you're holding carbon in the growing tree for about 50 years. The peat you're burning could have held onto its carbon for many thousands of years if left in the bog. Extracting peat also tends to destroy the bog, stopping new peat from accumulating in the future. And then there's the water management impact of destroying bogs. They act like sponges, holding onto rainwater and releasing it slowly. If you remove the bogs, rainwater flows into the rivers much faster and you get flooding downstream. If you think about where the bogs are, they're in areas of really high rainfall, e.g. western upland areas of the UK, so slowing the discharge of rainfall from those areas into the rivers is really important for downstream flood prevention.

Pretty much all professional horticulture has now stopped using peat. The one remaining reasonable source of peat is stuff recovered from the bottom of reservoirs where it's been washed off the hills.

[Mr Pointy]

OP: do you want the outside of your hose to look like this:



or this:


If you don't have easy access to cheap wood, go with gas. If it's not the primary source of heat in the house you'll use a gas stove far more frequently than a wood burner.

[trickywoo]

Mr Pointy said:

OP: do you want the outside of your hose to look like this:

That's a clumsy install at best. I'm not saying they add to the appearance of the house but they can be relatively OK.

[curvature]

Lotobear said:

...and if you get a cowboy this can happen

That's scary!

[curvature]

Acorn1 said:

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Having second thoughts now as I thought they would be cheap to run.

I see loads on line for between £500- £700, is it the installation that will ramp it up to £4k?

Don't buy a cheap stove / woodburner as you will regret it.

When we built our extension I was starting to run out of cash so got one from a company online called Modern Stoves. I visited their premises up in Cheshire and was initially happy with it. However after a couple of years the plate steel door bowed and we had to replace it. Our replacement unit still uses plate steel but has a cast iron door.

The new stove was four times the price (HWAM 2640c) but you just cannot compare them. It burns so much better and once up to temperature will run all day long without any issues. The glass just needs a dry wipe down between burns.

You could potentially install it yourself but you will struggle to get anyone to sign it off. Depending on where you live you may find a registered installer who just makes a living out of the installation but based on that example above you do need to ensure you get a decent installer.

[Gixer968CS]

I had a stove installed a year ago. It's free standing, on a (glass) harth with a flue directly off the top and up through a flat roof with about a 6foot chimney on top. It was installed by a local specialist, obviously in-line with all the required regs and with a certificate for if we want to sell the house. Total cost of installation was c£7k but I was quoted way more by others. The flue was a significant cost.

As for logs, I pay £150 for a meter square bag of very good quality kiln dried logs. They'll last a few months of mainly weekend usage. They burn slowly and warmly but if your were to use is as a main source of heat it would be significantly more expensive than gas and lot more of a faff.

We absolutely love our stove and believe it to be worth every penny we spent.

[dickymint]

curvature said:

Acorn1 said:

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Having second thoughts now as I thought they would be cheap to run.

I see loads on line for between £500- £700, is it the installation that will ramp it up to £4k?

Don't buy a cheap stove / woodburner as you will regret it.

When we built our extension I was starting to run out of cash so got one from a company online called Modern Stoves. I visited their premises up in Cheshire and was initially happy with it. However after a couple of years the plate steel door bowed and we had to replace it. Our replacement unit still uses plate steel but has a cast iron door.

The new stove was four times the price (HWAM 2640c) but you just cannot compare them. It burns so much better and once up to temperature will run all day long without any issues. The glass just needs a dry wipe down between burns.

You could potentially install it yourself but you will struggle to get anyone to sign it off. Depending on where you live you may find a registered installer who just makes a living out of the installation but based on that example above you do need to ensure you get a decent installer.

You can do all the work yourself and local Building Control can sign it off......notify them before you start the work.