Heating your Home....

[kenny]

7 hours ago, Costock_Fox said:

Are you in a low emissions zone? If so, you can only burn treated wood so you wouldn’t be allowed to cut a tree down and burn that.

 

I had one fitted about 4 months ago and am in a low emission zone so I buy huge pallets of treated wood for about £180 a pop and I recon they will last about 6 weeks of heavy usage in the winter.

The fuel isn't an issue as long as you have a DEFRA approved clean air burner. Most of the modern ones have this feature. It allows the smoke to pass through the flames twice to remove unburnt material going up the flue.

 

You can tell it's working as you get very little ash. We can burn ours for around 24 hours before the box is full whereas an open fire produces a shed load of it.

 

I have never bought wood and have managed to get by with either felled trees that we season ourselves or pallets.

[kenny]

9 hours ago, weller54 said:

I've just installed a log burner. Did it myself as the quotes I had were ridiculous for what seemed a straightforward install. Only thing I had done for me was the fitting of the chimney liner as I didn't fancy getting up that high!!!

So, now to what type of wood you can burn....

Read up and of course most information says to only burn seasoned wood. But, we have access to a lot of woodland where we live and there's stacks of old branches and wood that's been felled over the years.

Why can't this type of wood be burnt?

1 builders bag of 'seasoned' wood to buy is circa £90?...

Seems expensive!!

 

Just bear in mind without the burner being signed off by an approved installer you may struggle to sell your property.

[weller54]

3 minutes ago, kenny said:

Just bear in mind without the burner being signed off by an approved installer you may struggle to sell your property.

Yep..

But firstly I won't be selling and secondly IF I had to at some point any potential buyer can get it checked out. It's all been done properly, with a chimney liner installed, chimney register plate fitted and carbon monoxide meter.

 

[VLC86]

8 minutes ago, kenny said:

The fuel isn't an issue as long as you have a DEFRA approved clean air burner. Most of the modern ones have this feature. It allows the smoke to pass through the flames twice to remove unburnt material going up the flue.

 

You can tell it's working as you get very little ash. We can burn ours for around 24 hours before the box is full whereas an open fire produces a shed load of it.

 

I have never bought wood and have managed to get by with either felled trees that we season ourselves or pallets.

Nice, didn’t know that.

[weller54]

13 minutes ago, kenny said:

The fuel isn't an issue as long as you have a DEFRA approved clean air burner. Most of the modern ones have this feature. It allows the smoke to pass through the flames twice to remove unburnt material going up the flue.

 

You can tell it's working as you get very little ash. We can burn ours for around 24 hours before the box is full whereas an open fire produces a shed load of it.

 

I have never bought wood and have managed to get by with either felled trees that we season ourselves or pallets.

Good info thanks..

Yes, our logburner is DEFRA approved with an airwash system. It's a Fireline Stove and it has great write-ups!

I am going to order a supply of seasoned logs and just add some of my own wood I've cut , including pallets.  Assume it's not necessary to remove all the nails as I would think these just end up in the ashpan?

 

[kenny]

7 minutes ago, weller54 said:

Good info thanks..

Yes, our logburner is DEFRA approved with an airwash system. It's a Fireline Stove and it has great write-ups!

I am going to order a supply of seasoned logs and just add some of my own wood I've cut , including pallets.  Assume it's not necessary to remove all the nails as I would think these just end up in the ashpan?

 

Ours is full of nails, they are fine except they get stuck in the bars which is annoying. Also you need to remove them before having it swept as they cock up the sweepers hoover. You want to have it swept at the end of winter.

 

Also worth getting a flue thermometer to let you know when it's hot enough. Once thats hot, the stuff going up is fairly clean and the creosote will have been burned off.

 

With your cut wood, best to stockpile now for next year, it will be ready to go. That being said, if your fire is roaring when a slightly green log goes on then it will be fine, it won't be as hot.

 

Seasoned hardwood such as oak burns at 100 degrees or so hotter than quick grown softwood that pallets are made of.

[Smudge]

The only wood I would advise against using would be any form of pine tree, the sap does not dry out and can coat your chimney flue

[Jon the Hat]

4 hours ago, Livid said:

There might be a really easy answer to this.

 

If we have the radiators turned on full, will it take our boiler a shorter time to bring the temperature up to the temperature set on the thermostat than if we had the radiators turned down a little? 

If you mean the individual thermostats on the radiators then no, they will remain open until the room reaches the desired heat.  You can have a situation though where the room thermostat is set higher than the radiator thermostats and then your boiler keeps running without much benefit.

[taupe]

We had an open fire (and chimney) when we first moved in (stone house, rural France) It was next to useless as a heating a solution though lovely to look at. We had an insert (a word burner) put in. That whacked out the heat in an uncontrolled fashion and, as remarked above, heated the room wonderfully - but nowhere else. The heat was not dispersed, no idea why. We burnt any old wood in it. Oak we found to be expensive and not necessary, burned too hot. We have good local supplies of hornbeam and that works well, but I'll burn off bits of anything. There is no local restriction nor inspection of smoke particulates. We rarely use the insert now, it's become a back up.

 

We installed a wood pellet heating and hot system some years ago, with a 5 tonne pellet silo that gives us a year's worth. The house is well insulated now and adds up to pleasant winter evenings, neither too hot nor too cold.