multifuel log burners

Message deleted by Gransnet for breaking our forum guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

Message deleted by Gransnet for breaking our forum guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

And you MUST get a carbon monoxide alarm too.

Whatever your son does he MUST get it installed by a professional installer who will check the flue and also the whether the draft in the room is adequate for the size of stove bought. An installer can also check that the output of the stove is right for the room/house he plans to put it into.

We have had a wood burning stove in our living room for the past 5 years. During the recent run of extra cold winters our gas consumption has not risen despite the low temperatures because on cold days we have lit the stove rather than turn the heating back on and the heating circulating around the downstairs rooms is sufficient for our needs. This year I have paid £100 for a lorry load of wood and that will be sufficient for this winter and I should only need to order a half load next year, so it costs us about £75 a winter to run.

An edit function would be good so I could correct silly typos.

The air going up the stairs is warmer than the air coming down the stairs, but after the air has circulated round a few times it is all warm.

Our stove is double sided so the air so convection works well but my daughter had one of those fans and said they worked really well.

Warm air flowing downstairs is an interesting notion, it normally goes up and stays up.
If you do get a stove there is a very wonderful little fan thing that you stand on top of the stove - it works on a bimetal strip and distributes the hot air much more effectively than old fashioned convection currents.

wow soo confusing i live in a 1930s house that was built for a coal/coke fire so the chimney is made for this type of fire,we wouldnt need any sort of liner and the sweep will tell us if there is a problem,i dont mind the cleaning and setting of the fire and will keep central heating as back up so why am i hesitant

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.

That's a good point merlot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.