wood burning stoves

We have 2 fireplaces, each end of our home. Very old original chimney at one, bricks get roaring hot, pleasant and cozy.

We pick up wood on our property, shed dry to a moisture number.

Effective, cheap, nice addition with CH.

Modern wood burners, built to the new regulations give off far less pollution than they used to do. They are certainly are far less polluting than an open fire.

We use a multi fuel ‘wood burner’ so in winter use smokeless ovoids and seasoned wood. That ensures if it’s really cold the fire (if banked up and locked down) can stay on all night. Also run a solid fuel Aga (smokeless fuel ovoids) in winter. It all gets turned off at around Easter time until Octoberish. Cooking is fantastic on the Aga so together with the wood burner we rarely have central heating on. It radiates through the bungalow. As someone else posted they take a bit of work though.

My son has one - he lights it when it’s really cold - but when I’m there , it exacerbates my asthma - Ofcourse I don’t make a fuss but thankfully they don’t use it ofteb

I love mine and wouldn’t be without it. We follow all the guidelines re wood to be used and it’s easy to light and warms the room really quickly, so much so that we often keep the doors to the kitchen diner open. It means we hardly need to use the central heating. We’ve had ours about 5 years and it’s inspected and chimney flue swept every year. With all the talk we’ve had previously re electricity and gas shortages, at least we know we can keep warm and heat food if we needed to.

We have a multi fuel stove which can burn logs or smokeless fuel. We love it. We’re open plan, with a high ceiling, and it keeps the whole area warm. Lovely to sit near and watch the flames.
Clearing out and resetting the fire takes about 15mins each morning. Easy to do but can be messy. Can put some coal on about 10.30pm and it ticks over all night if really cold. Does mean central heating only needs to be on low.
Think they can be over hot in a small room with low ceilings, so consider this before buying.

I’ve lit my wood burner about 5 every evening since the cold spell. Last log on about 7.30 and the room is toast till about 10. It also heats the kitchen if I leave the door open between the rooms. Washing dries overnight.
Love it

We’ve had our log burning stove for about five years now, and use kiln dried wood, along with logs we collect locally and store for a couple of years. Only light it at 6pm until about 10. This might sound strange, but I find it very therapeutic during the long Winter days, as I suffer from SAD and spend the Spring/Summer/Autumn months working in the garden!

Love mine - don't use it very often as our house is extremely warm, heated through the south facing windows all year round and insulated within an inch of its life.

LOUISA1523

Esspee

Horrible polluting and I have heard they are soon to be banned.

No they are not ?

I do hope those who are against wood burners don’t use tumble driers.
Microplastics from tumble driers are seriously polluting the atmosphere, animals and us. They are permanent and non degradable.
I won’t have one, but in winter dry my clothes at night in the residual heat from the woodburner.

A brother has them in both homes, U.K. and France. He doesn’t need or use much other heating. He also simmers soups and casseroles on top of them. And manages to get much of the wood for free, often offcuts from timber yards.

Dd and Sil have one. They don’t have it lit all the time, far from it, but it certainly reduces the need for other heating. I’m not sure I’d want the faff of the ashes, but it’s lovely and cosy. We don’t even have a chimney, so not an option for us.

Given the rising cost of other fuels, and potential power cuts because of climate-change storms (recent US weather in particular 🥶) TBH I can’t see them being abandoned, let alone banned, any time soon.

We have a modern woodburner and would not be without it in the winter. We burn kiln dried logs. It saves us money on gas CH. It gives us an option if electricity goes off (hence no pump for the gas CH) or if our gas boiler fails. They are not going to be banned. I am asthmatic and it has no effect on me.

I would love one, but DH hates them, really hates them. He says they are polluting too, but he hates them anyway. I have an open fire and I can see that's obviously polluting so we hardly use it. No gas out here.
Not sure what to do this winter, and I'm a really frozen soul.
Freeze I suppose, and add yet another layer.

If it’s a choice of my wood burner or freezing to death it’s a no brainer. Has anyone done any research as to the cost of heating one room with the wood burner compared with the whole house in electric? When we were young we only heated one room? My wood burner has wood from trees that needed pruning, not chopped down, and are properly seasoned.

We get free wood from both my DP and DSILs jobs ( off cuts) ..... saved us loads last year ..

We hardly had the heating on at all...only weekends .....our log burner heats the back lounge and kitchen so all thats needed when its just me and DP

Esspee

Horrible polluting and I have heard they are soon to be banned.

No they are not ?

Maybe we should all just freeze to death instead...will that be better for the environment?

Dbro has one - he collects wood from all over the place for it. He’s fixed up something which wafts the warm air out of the room so they hardly ever need their central heating on. Soups and casseroles etc. are also often put to simmer on top.

You are right. All fossil fuels are bad. And even new ‘eco friendly’ stoves are bad for our health.

Please see the website Doctors and Scientists against wood burning.
Woodsmokepollution.org

Please also see Mums4lungs who campaign against wood burning as it is causing so many health issues.

Apart from anything, we can’t grow wood quick enough. We need all the trees we have growing to protect our environment.

Highly recommend them. As said earlier on, they are not being banned.
We’ve had one with a back boiler for over 40 years in our cottage. . Just installed one in our new build. 3kW Malvern fire. It will also heat the whole house as we’ve installed a heat recovery system. We are lucky enough to have our own supply of wood and we’ve got four stores so it dries out to meet new regs.
They look great too.

We have a multi-burner which will take coal as well as wood. We don't burn coal, only wood but it was much cheaper to install as we didn't need to to have the chimney lined.

Its not lit before five in the evening and the last small log usually goes on about eight as by then the room is really toasty. Having it means the central heating only has to provide light background heat. I wpykd be interested to know what the pollution is from this - the wood off-set by lower gas bills.

We have a large woodshed so we can keep the wood a couple of years so its well seasoned as that gives off so much less pollution.

I have the impression that all fossil fuels are bad or discouraged, and the electricity from sustainable sources is to be cheaper .

I should add, the reason for the smoke sometimes making me cough was that we weren't always sure what kind of wood it was.
A lot of it was oak (there were lots of oak forests in the area) but there could have been other types mixed in to keep the price down

sodapop

We changed our wood burner for a pellet burner. So much easier to manage and more controllable. Wood burners are a lot of work and more expensive to run than the pellet burner. The pellet burner is cleaner therefore better for the environment.

we had a pellet burner in our last house. It cost a lot to be serviced, if you could find a registered engineer and we did not have hoppers, We all (small development) had to each order a tonne at a time and we had to carry the sacks into the garage to be stored on a pallet. It was efficient in that the house was built eco. After a while we had emissions from the flue joins and you could smell the smoke. We used only the highest grade of pellets and had very little ash. One year, pellets were almost unobtainable due to the bad weather plus they were needed to fire power stations. That stove also provided hot water when the solar thermal panels did not efficient in winter

I moved after 10 years and was more than happy to have a clean emission certified multifuel stovax installed here, I now have fuel backup with stored kiln dried logs and smokeless eggs

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and advice. We will give it a lot of consideration before making a decision.