Wood burning stove questions

[Tippychoocks]

Quick background - I have a bungalow with night storage heaters that are super-pricey and, frankly, rubbish. I've opened a bricked-up fireplace to reveal the old back boiler and a good, if dirty, chimney.

If I just put a grate in I need to get the back boiler removed, which is apparantly v.expensive, and it won't be as efficient. I'm relying on the stove to pretty much heat the house but I can't get a stove with an output of more than 5kw cos of the size of the room. SO I need the efficiency of a woodburner I think. I have no real options otherwise that I could afford to install (oil) or run (electric rads) and there's no gas supply to the village.

I am shocked and saddened by the prices of small woodburners: the stoves don't seem so bad but the installation and chimbley liners seem to take the prices into the silly leagues. The cheapest I've had so far for a small stove is around £650 plus VAT, just for the stove and parts. I'm currently chasing builders to find a HETAS registered one to install but am expecting that to be at least the same again

Is this normal? Can I be rude and ask what you paid for your woodburners (those who have them)? Or......long shot.....can someone tell me the name and number of someone in North Devon who is just dying to do this for half the price?

No help really - but we ended up paying almost £2000 for ours all in. The stove itself was cheap but installing the liner etc was horrendous.

Wood actually works out quite expensive if you have to buy it. Dont know what the answer is.

Our local stove shop sold us ours and installed it. I think it was about £1000 in total, and not their smallest. Maybe visiting stove shops and finding out prices would be a good idea?

ooo, that's good mummytime, that's a low price from what I've been told.

I have been to three local stove shops for quotes, tried my damndest to get local builders to use their contacts and have priced up the individual parts of the quotes on ebay and the local builders merchant. I've managed to get the parts cheaper but them can't find anyone to install (cos they're connected to the stove centres).
Sigh. It's getting colder, I'm going to have to just bite the bullet and pay all that money.

Sorry to hijack this thread but I am building a house at the minute. We have a large open plan kitchen, living, dining area where we want to install a multi-fuel stove. Does anyone know roughly what output size we would need for a large area?

jennymac try this you will need to measure the space you have and it will tell you what output you need.

Tippy - does the chimney really need the liner? It is a massive cost to have this installed. I'd suggest you get a local sweep to come and have a good look at your chimney.It does depend a little on the age of your property.
We have open fires and will be having one replaced with a woodburner (opening up to original Victorian fireplace). Our builder agrees with us that we do not need a liner. It's more important to have one with a multi-fuel burner as the coal soots up the chimney and also if you will be shutting your woodburner down at night to keep it in then this will soot the chimney quicker too. My builder and local sweep(who is also a qualified fitter) agree that a liner is not needed as long as we have our chimney swept regularly and are careful about what types of wood we burn.

Try Countrywide. They have a Villager 2 door for £410 in the sale

Our modern house we only paid £500 for a very small stove to be installed (no liner needed).

I've always read that with old chimneys you nearly always badly need the liner, too high a risk of fire otherwise (the cinders coming out of the stove are very hot, much hotter than an open fire). But by all means get a sweep in to give an opinion.

We don't burn coal ourselves, too nasty to deal with the waste ashes. Out of the stove it's too hot to go straight in the bin so you'd have to store it somewhere first, and otherwise unsuitable to go on the compost.

We bought a Stovax with 6kW of heat output...it was about £2000 total, but it is lush! :) keeps the whole downstairs of our house warm and it doesn't get all dirty and sooty, like you think.

Good Luck!!!

I do need the liner I think,from what I've been told. I was quoted £1200 today, just to line the flue . I live in a bungalow so told them they could halve it . There's no way that's right but it just goes to show that it's easy enough to get sent down the wrong - and v.expensive -path!

Next plan, I have an installation engineer coming to advise me for a small fee. At this stage if he tells me to line the chimney with the neighbour's cats I might say yes.

OMG No doubt a simple "supply & demand" situation but I can't believe how much you guys are paying. Our wood-stove (no idea of the "heat output" rating but it heats our whole 3 bed log cabin (in Canada) adequately when outside temps fall to -30/-40C) cost us the grand total of $599!

Lazydog, what are postal charges like from Canada ?
I too can't believe how difficult this is turning out to be.