AIBU to ask if you’ve tried wood stove central heating

[Tworoads]

Like everyone, I’m trying to think how I’m going to keep the house warm without racking up big bills. I work from home so have to have some heat during the day too unfortunately.
We have a woodburning stove in the living room already and tried just heating the house with that in February and March. Reasonably successful but furthest room away from stove was cold.
Been looking at woodburning stove with backboiler to run the central heating radiators and hot water but not sure if it’s cost effective or if it’ll do the job.
Has anyone tried it?

I’m quite used to bringing in wood and clearing out the stove. A truckload of wood has filled three log sheds (£330 - seemed a lot for the money) so have enough to get started.
If you are trying other ways of heating, please share your ideas 😊

I know someone who does this. They get their wood for free though. They said it wouldn't make sense financially otherwise. They also live in the back end of beyond so pollution is not such an issue as in a built up area.

Similar to above, we didn’t do this we’ve got a wood pellet stove and a wood burner & CH runs from the pellet stove. But we did look at what you’ve suggested & the downside was needing to keep the stove going & the amount of wood nedded. Bit certainly doable I think.

Surely it would cost a fortune to retrofit a back boiler? If you aren't getting free wood it'll probably take decades to recoup the cost.

We used to have this in a rental and it was shit! It maybe would work better if you’re in all day and keep the stove going 24/7 but I cannot describe to you how soul destroying it is to come home from work on a freezing January night and have to light the fire. Ours also used to need to be absolutely roaring hot to get the back boiler going and upstairs might as well have been unheated because the rads took so long to warm up. It’s also cold in the morning because even if you bank the fire overnight it’s not hot enough by early morning to run the heating. We had plug in oil rads in the bedroom on constantly so we didn’t die of hypothermia - I used to sleep in a fleece onesie over my PJs and we had a 13.5 tog duvet. I’m sure ours was particularly shit because it didn’t work properly and the LL didn’t care but omg never again

I bought a load of kiln dried logs for about £150 last autumn and it’s lasted ages - some left over in fact - and really helped heat my house. Only had the heating on very minimally last winter.
Only drawback is that I seem to have developed asthma…

Sorry, my post wasn’t massively relevant. I’d be interested in this system but I worry about my health using the wood burner so much.

I have this. If you are happy feeding the fire constantly throughout the day then it's OK.
Also, if you have a cheap source of wood it can be financially worth it, but we chop, stack and season our own wood to keep costs down and its bloody hard work.
In the winter we have lots of hot water and it's great, but we also have an immersion for hot water in the summer.
Ours heats 5 radiators, all downstairs, which is enough to warm the house to about 21 by evening time, but often in the morning it can be as low as 9 in really cold winter months.

Keeping a wood fire going to ensure that you have hot water is time consuming and can be costly. Wood doesn't generate as much heat as coal or gas for example. So if you decide to go away for the day or overnight it can take some time to re heat the water and get the home warm.

Than there is the pollution, especially if you live in a built up area. What about your carbon footprint? Have you already forgotten the heatwave?

My Dad had a back burner central heating system in a rental house. It was awful, took forever to heat up and morning were especially cold as the fire wasn't on overnight.
It's can work during the day if you are home to maintain it, but scraping ice off the windows in the morning isn't fun.

I have/ had various wood stove option in different buildings. Old farm house and steadings. In my house I have a 4kw stove in sitting room and 8kw in playroom. Having both going warms up the house much more effectively than 1. Really only use oil central heating in proper winter.

house 2 used to be a holiday cottage. It has a big 12kw stove in an open plan downstairs with a back boiler for hot water. It is effective at heating the space apart from the furthest away downstairs bedroom which has an electric panel heater for a quick boost. The drawback is in the winter you need so much heat you have too much hot water if you just use the fire so tend to supplement by having electric underfloor heating on low and everyone has massive baths.

house 3 former bothy/ stables has a 12kw stove and radiators. This provides really effective heating for a series of rooms and they are all warm. I would say that this is the only building that doesn’t need supplemental heating in winter. It is all on the ground floor the installer wouldn’t recommend radiators upstairs. This building has solar panels and any spare electric goes to heat the hot water tank. Definitely the cheapest building to run overall.

I would say I’m not a stranger to a chainsaw and gather up lots of free wood which can then be seasoned. Obviously there is a time and equipment cost there. Every time we go out I take a bag and fill it with sheep wool, pine cones and sticks at this time of year. Use it to make freefirelighters.

Worth noting you can buy slow burn compressed logs which will keep going all night on low. Quite satisfying to come down in morning and throw some sticks on and have everything whoosh into action.

We have log burner with back boiler. It runs six radiators with ease. It could run more, but we have a small house. And did overspec the log burner. No problem with heat getting round house. Works best if log burner is on basically for 24hrs a day in winter. It's shut down at night and during day - just so that is ticking over, opened up and loaded at about 7am, shut down and then built up again at about 4pm. It romps through wood at a phenomenal rate. Our shed of seasoned wood is 10mx7mx7m, and that should last us 6 months. It's hassle. Traipsing out for logs, cleaning it out, never mind the chopping and stacking (ours comes in the round or length). If there's a power cut I'm told we'd have to have it shut right down as the water in the jacket wouldn't be being pumped round and would boil. So wouldn't get the benefit of the log burner!!!!!!

It's pretty much all or nothing. And it takes about 4 hrs to get the house warm if it's been out.

Thank you for all your comments.
Doesnt sound encouraging. Don’t know if it’s worth the extra expense then.
As a woodburning stove on its own, it heats two thirds of our downstairs.
I disagree about carbon footprint comments. You think it’s cleaner to burn gas? You can get stoves now that have the eco clean air certificate and of course you can plant trees to replace what you have used - admittedly it takes decades for them to grow! Even if you cover your roof in solar panels and get your power from windmills you are part of the damaging mining process to extract copper etc.
You just have to do the best you can.

How many people are at home during the day? Last winter we tried the 'heat the person, not the house' idea as much as possible, and it did make a big difference to our bills (one of us WFH full time) Our house is old, not insulated so any heating method is expensive.

We bought hiking baselayers to wear under regular clothing (thin/technical gear which is much more comfortable than layering jumpers) slipper boots, and a game changer for when sat at a desk was a heated throw each. Heated throw across your lap under your desk gives almost the same cosy feeling as having the heating on but far far cheaper.

That’s a brilliant idea! Good to hear it worked.
Has anyone invested in solar panels and found it worthwhile?

We used to be solid fuel.

Wood burns pretty quickly. You can't stock the stove up to last all day or overnight with wood, you need something that burns slowly like coal or smokeless ovoids.

It is pretty efficient, you don't ever feel like you are wasting heat as systems tend to work on the basis that it beats the water tank and when that reaches a temp set by the thermostat on the tank the pump switches on for the heating so the radiators are on. But of course while it is heating the water the room the stove is in is also being heated. So realistically where now I'm on lpg I will hold off putting the heating on in the autumn until it gets really cold, with solid fuel I had heating as soon as it got a little chilly in the autumn because it heated the water so was cheaper than using the electric immersion heater.

But. It is also a pain in the arse. You don't have a "nice" fire. The vast majority of the time you have a banked fire that is just burning long and slow. It is all about maintaining a steady temp 24hrs a day. In the morning you get up and out is bloody freezing, you've got to riddle the fire and empty the ash and open the air vents to get a fast burn on to clear the glass and soot. If you didn't fill the coal scuttle the night before you've got to go out and get coal. After a short, faster burn you bank the fire and close the air vents again for a slow burn. If you've not used to much hot water then the heating might come on, if you are all having showers then it might not yet. When you get back from work again you riddle the ash and open the vents for a boost of heating for the evening. Before bed you bank again and close the vents. It is piddling out down but you've still got to go outside and full the coal scuttle.

If all adults in the house are leaving early for work then you might not have the time to riddle, burn, bank and turn down before you leave for work. So then when you get home the house is fucking cold because the fire had gone out. Which might mean you have no hot water either.

When you go on holiday in winter you can't leave your heating on a frost setting so you have to turn the water off and drain the system in case of pipes freezing. So when you get home after a week away the house is freezing and because the type of heating works by keeping a steady temp it can take a couple of days to get the fabric of the house warm again. It is really joyless coming home and needing to light the fire to get water for baths and some heat when you need to unpack and try to sort tea.

So on balance... very glad that when we moved house we got lpg! One day when technology has improved a little more I'll look at converting to a greener alternative!

We used to live in a rented house whose only source of heat and hot water was a wood burning stove and back boiler.

We were cold a lot. We ran out of hot water a lot. The landlord's insurance wouldn't allow us to have the stove on when we were not in - so we never came into a warm house/could have a shower as soon as we got in. The house was never warm on winter mornings.

Wood wasn't cheap, even 20 years ago - we used to gather from forests and fields, and whatever dh bought home from work (shopfitting).

Clearing the ash out of the stove all the time lost it's appeal after about a week.

I hated it. It's a romantic idea, but it sucks if that's all you've got.

If you have your own compartmented woodland where you can coppice trees on a five to ten year rotation, it's doable. I did it in an unbelievably remote house. A woodfired Rayburn provided oodles of hot water and throbbing radiators. It needs regular feeding and some cleaning out, but not much.

Thank you for all your comments.
Sounds pretty joyless and inefficient to depend on a woodburning stove.
Solar panels and heat pumps are just so expensive and take over ten years to recoup the outlay, I believe.
I think you are right that the future will bring better options.
How is everyone planning to face the winter energy costs? We get a £66 per month contribution from the government but it’s scary to hear the possible new energy caps in October and January.

Are you going to give the heated jackets a go?