multifuel log burners

We wouldn't be without ours, bichonmad. Do some research on the internet and find out which is the best one for the size of room, dimensions of fireplace etc. Unless your son has fitted one before you need to get it fitted by an experienced 'chimney operative' (eat your heart out, Mary Poppins) or you won't be covered by your house insurance should you have a fire. If your son fits it you will still need a certificate for insurance purposes.

Go for a multifuel rather than a straight woodburner as you can then mix coal and wood but your chimney may need sweeping more often.

Our DD has one and it is marvellous , gives out so much warmth , quite economical as well I believe .
Also lovely to see the flames licking , laying it is rather nice & old fashioned I think !
We would have one ourselves , but our chimneys were blocked up many moons ago !

We found a great dealer/installer who talked us through all the options. Went for a small Charnwood as were impressed with the company (they recommended a local installer who was very experienced and who also helped us make the right choices (we live in a non standard house so its important you get good advice if the chimney is complicated or, as in our case, non existent).

Our 'Island' unit keeps us incredibly snug in the winter to the effect we have to keep some of the interior doors open. Once its up to temperature the wood burns very slowly and efficiently (important as logs can get expensive if you don't live in a rural area).

My DH installed ours around 10 years ago and love it. When it is up to temperature I can switch off the heating in the downstairs rooms and leave the sitting room door open and it heats the whole of the ground floor. The only downside (and it is only minor) is cleaning it, but only needs doing once a week (maybe more depending on how often you use it) and storing logs which can take up a lot of space if you get in enough to last the winter. I usually use a firelighter to get it going but after that just logs.

I do have the chimney swept every year just to be on the safe side, although the last time I had it cleaned the sweep said there was very little build up in the chimney. Make sure you get advice from a reputable supplier as there are many different types on the market.

We have a Godin here in France and I just love it - once lit it stays alight for months! I close the vents at night and make sure it is fuelled up and in the morning I give it a bit of a riddle or rake and open the vents - soon have a little blaze going. We use only wood on ours. It will warm the whole of the downstairs and take the chill off our bedroom upstairs. We just have the CH on for about an hour first thing to warm bedrooms and bathroom and if very cold the same in the evening. We use PGL gas here so expensive but last year we did not even use a tankful.
There are regulations about chimney liners now and I think for the stoves they need to be double lined - DS is a Corgi engineer and makes us aware of any safety regulations.
I also have a kettle I stand on the top and it almost gets to boiling even when full - so just a couple of minutes on the hob.

The other thing I forgot to say is that you do need to be careful about the wood - that it is very dry and has no wet sap - as in pine and fruit wood, as this clogs up the chimney very quickly. We have ours cleaned more than once a season to be on the safe side - DH has been very surprised to see the amount of build up when I have insisted on having the sweep and he has thought it was fine.

We live in a large old five bedroomed house, so poor insulation and do all our heating with two wood burning stoves. One heats the hot water and a large one that heats the whole house, if we leave the doors open to let the air circulate. If we had to pay for the wood it would cost a fortune but I collect the wood for free from a local pine furniture factory. They are happy for me to take it away especially during the summer when no one else wants it.

Have stoves really got any advantages over an open fire? I mean for sitting by. I appreciate that the cast iron gets hot and radiates heat, but are n' t you supposed to keep the doors shut and just look at the logs burning?

I do like to toast my toes.

I do know the old argument about the heat going up the chimney, but if the chimney is properly designed?

j08 if you are having the fire for looks then choose which ever you prefer but for heat a stove is a lot more efficient. We had an open fire in the lounge which we replaced with stove and from barely being able to keep the lounge warm we can now heat the whole house.

We love our multifuel stove. We have a small pressed steel one made in the UK. Most expensive part of installation was having the chimney lined with a metal flue liner. DH does voluntary work on the Green Belt so we have a supply of free logs most of the time.They really do have to be seasoned though-we have a log store in the garden.Ash burns particularly well,as does hornbeam.Heats the whole of our house in the Spring and Autumn. We have the chimney swept just once a year now as we burn really dry wood.

Probably only reduces your overall heating bill if you have a limitless supply of free wood, and a household slave who does not mind handling the wood, cleaning out the stove and keeping the fire going. Is your son this person I wonder or will it be like "can we have a dog mum. I'll walk it and clear up after it, honest" We have all seen that one pan out haven't we.

When I was with exdh we had one. We had the chimney professionally lined before the stove was installed. The all time record for it not going out was the time it was lit in early October and went continuously until late March! (Doing what Bez said).

The only mistake we made was to choose one with a back boiler that also fed the CH system, so if there was a sudden chilly day, there was no option for just clicking on the central heating, you had to light the fire!

I think a stove with the back up of ordinary central heating would be a great option, but do check what sort of price you can get fuel for in your area. If you are buying bags of fuel from you local garage/petrol station it can work out to be quite expensive, but check with a local solid fuel merchant for discounts available when buying multiple bags, providing you have the space to store them.

We have a Charnwood multi fuel in Scotland. Even at New Year we have had to open the windows, it gives out so much heat. Nothing better on a cold winter afternoon than to snuggle down with a good book. It is more economical banked up with 'coal' and occasional logs. X

I can't quite see how it could make the whole house, or even the whole of the downstairs, warm without overheating the living room.

Wonder what the equivalent wattage of the smallest one available would be.

I always laugh when I watch Escape To The Country (I'm a bit of an addict) and they show a huge barn conversion with a medium sized woodburner up one end and declare, 'It heats this whole space'

Our Hunter heats a medium/large living room. We also have one radiator which we keep on low during cold spells.

In the winter we light ours around 4pm and keep the doors closed until around 8pm when DH likes to open the doors to toast his toes. It uses up more wood but as we're self sufficient in wood I can't really complain.

jingle, the wattage equivalent is usually stated in the sales info.

They do normally have a wattage mark so you have an idea - our one is an 8KW which is good for this house but would not be large enough for a cavernous place. Ours is also solid cast iron which retains the heat well and we have it proud of the chimney. If you had all the doors closed all the time maybe the room would get too hot but at the same time you learn to regulate how much fuel and how fast it burns to help control that. If you have a metal chimney pipe going up the inside of the room before it goes into the chimney or out through the wall you also have more heating area. That system can also save a conventional chimney being needed.
I find that once the fabric of the house becomes really warm it does not need such a huge heat source to maintain it. We have double glazing, lined curtains and shutters to assist our battle against the vagaries of the cold French winters which can be can be much colder than UK, so we do factor that in with the clothing we wear - no flimsy blouses or off the shoulder creations here!

Trouble is, once you've taken out your open fire and put a stove in, there's no going back.

Wrings hands with indecision.

Sorry to jump in on your thread Bichonmad, but it's something I've been pondering over too.

That would not necessarily be true Jingle - depends how much removing you do etc - we could pull ours out and replace with the log basket thing - DH and the sweep pull it out anyway when it is swept.

Don't forget stoves need a register plate to block off the chimney - apart from the hole where the flue goes. This means that during the day, when the room might not be occupied, any warmth does not disappear up the chimney as it would with an open fire.

I'm never gonna make this decision! You would not believe the hours I have spent going through all the different websites! Unlike Bichon' s son, mine is against changing ours. But then, he's not here very much. I like the idea of keeping it in overnight and not having to do the grate quite so often.

That's a good point merlot.

The reason why we can heat the whole house and not overheat the lounge is due to the design of the house. We have two sets of stairs one in the lounge and another at the other end of the house and if we leave the interconnecting doors open the air flows up the lounge stairs through the bedrooms and down the front stairs through the dinning room and back into the lounge.

We have a back boiler on the other stove to heat the water but that goes through a mixer tank which the gas boiler also goes through so we can use wood or gas to heat the water and radiators. The plumbing arrangement for mixing the water from the stove and the gas boiler is tricky and most installers do not know how to do it.