Wood Burning Stoves for Heating Hot Water (versus Heat Pump)

[user1473112566]

Does anyone use a Wood Burning stove to generate their hot water? Or how about a heat pump?

We are doing a big reno on a small house and hope to just heat via one wood burning stove (no rads, maybe some electric UFH as rarely used back up), and then also use this to generate the hot water (via a boiler, attached to the stove)... however another plumber has just said forget the stove attachment, use a air source heat pump for the hot water...

Does anyone have experience of either of these? It's a minefield! Would love some advice or comments.

Thank you!

[PigletJohn]

just to check, you have no gas? Electric UFH suggests you have unlimited money, right?

is he suggesting Air or Ground pump?

Do you live in a place that gets snow and frost?

Do you have a good supply of free wood?

[scaryteacher]

We had a cottage on Dartmoor when we first married, and had some hot water and one rad off the woodburner. We did however have an immersion for hot water, as you don't want the woodburner on in the summer.

I was glad that we did have the immersion when dh went off to sea, it snowed hard, and I didn't drive, and I had to persuade a friend to load her car with frozen logs. I then had to defrost them under the woodburner when I finally got it alight, and had to get up in the night to make sure the woodburner didn't go out. Deep joy.

[SaltyHair]

PigletJohn, I just noticed your response.
Clearly we don't have unlimited money! We do have an unlimited supply of free wood though, my partner is a tree surgeon.
The logic with having some electric UFH is that, at times when we don't want to light fire, we have some heat back up. We chose electric rather than water because it's cheaper to install. More expensive to run I understand, but we hope to only run it rarely.
There is no gas.

I'm still trying to understand the pros and cons of either an air source heat pump to heat water, or a wood burner attachment/boiler that heats water directly off the stove and stores in in a tank for when we need it...

[VeryPunny]

I wouldn't do it. You need to be quite careful to spec the output of the stove to your water/heating requirements.

We are off mains gas. We have electric underfloor heating in a substantial amount of the house. Our electric bills are reasonable. That said, the electric UFH was installed into the extension, which is extremely well insulated and the floor was designed with UFH in mind. We have Calor gas to heat radiators in the rest of the house, as well as some hot water. Most of our water is heated via the immersion heater, using the Economy 7 tarif overnight.

If you have the space for a hot water tank, you really can't go too far wrong with an immersion heater. Ancient technology, nothing to go wrong, easy to fix. The installation costs of air source must be significant, surely?

Our neighbours have an air source heat pump. Their electricity bills were substantial until they went down the solar panel route - they did this a while ago so have the advantage of decent feed in tarifs.

[VeryPunny]

I meant to say, we also have a woodburner, but we use that for "fun" heat, rather than waking up to a warm house heat.