Multi fuel stove quite expensive to run...

[PeridotCricket]

Off the back of the thread from the poster who wants to take out a woodburner...

We’ve had ours a year and I love it....

But buying kiln dried wood and smokeless fuel isn’t cheap. A# we mostly light it about 7.30 in the evening we use wood mostly. Only use the smokeless fuel if it’s going to be on from much earlier.

But it’s expensive.....gas would be cheaper!,

Kiln dried wood is really expensive to buy! I don't know anyone who uses it for that reason - seasoned is much cheaper.

Search locally for seasoned hardwood. Farmers here deliver a 1 tonne size building bag full for £60-70.

Here, is the outskirts of a city

We have a multi fuel burner. Really efficient and we burn a mix of seasoned logs (c£60 for a one tonne bag delivered) and some ovals. Use less than a bag of ovals a week and have used less than one bag of logs since beginning of November. Are you reducing the airflow using the damper once it’s caught?

Are you buying your logs in small nets? Just wondered as that is the most expensive way to buy them. We just buy a big load of seasoned wood. The last load, which was £110 we think will last us two seasons. A bag of Taybrite lasts about 4 weeks as we don't use much. Also, running the stove means we use less oil as the heating turns itself off because it gets too warm, so for us it is pretty economical.

Have you looked at briquettes? They put out more heat than seasoned wood.

We bulk buy palettes and if you mix and match the briquettes with slow and fast burning types it keeps the costs down.

www.woodfuel.coop/faq/wood-briquettes-vs-logs/

I've had a multifuel, it's a nice ornament as well as a heater, but it makes more sense if you have ready access to a cheap or free source of fuel.

I always kept a few bags of smokeless soild fuel handy, in case I should run out in cold weather, or be ill and unable to collect or cut up more.

BTW, softwood, or damp or newly cut wood, fouls up your chimney with tar and soot, so it needs more sweeping that fully dried hardwood or solid fuel.

I'd do as @MillStone has just said, we have a wood burner. Plenty of people round here sell trailers of hardwood. Might be worth checking local fb pages and papers etc. We're lucky as my OH works as a dairyman and we live on the farm near a wood. Any fallen trees he can have as long as he cuts them up. I love my stove, saves on the cost of heating oil anyway. Good luck and I hope you find someone xx

Yes are you buying those nets of logs? Buy seasoned wood by the load, dumped on your drive for you to shift and stack.

I know people who mostly use waste wood for fuel: scavenged, old buildings, unwanted pallets, old fence panels, etc.

You’ll get much better heat from the coal.

We use mostly coal, topped up with one or two smaller logs at a time to get the flame effect. If we only used wood we’d get through vast quantities in no time (and not be so warm).

A big builders bag of kiln dried is £105 here. I have to say before I started this thread I’d been under the misapprehension that kiln dried was the recommendation to not fur up your chimney. I hadn’t realised that seasoned was ok too . That’s £95 a square metre...

I do turn the air intake down but can still go through 5 or 6 logs a night...

I still love it but I think it’s not v economic unless you’ve got a ready supply of wood....

I do like the briquettes but don’t have much storage space indoors for them....the wood is out in a wood store.

I've just checked our supplier. Tipper loads are £105 for 1.5 cubic metres of seasoned hardwood. Even if you allow a bit of grace on the measuring yours sounds expensive. We're in the SE and our supplier is a well known local tree surgeon, so I doubt they're the cheapest.

We store all our briquettes outside. They come in plastic bags anyway. And a quarter palette lasts a long while. We stack ours all round the garage.

According to the briquette supplier (who I appreciate wants to sell you briquettes) you get as much heat from 1 bag briquettes as 6 bags logs.

I can well believe it as our fire takes a lot less attention since moving to them, it's much more load and forget. We are big fans of a bark briquette smouldering at the back ticking over.

That's useful to know that briquettes can be kept outside. That price is pretty much standard. Maybe a £5-10 difference if there's an offer on

I used to find that kiln dried logs burned much more quickly than seasoned logs. Your logs sound very expensive, I used to pay between £45 and £60 for a builders bag of seasoned logs.

Buy a moisture meter. Aldi have them Instore at the moment for a tenner.

As you probably know, 15-20 % moisture for burning logs.

We find the heat logs from home bargains are the best. One lasts an hour, burns very hot and costs 50p when on offer. You can order online and collect instore.

We don't have a modern logburner, but we do have a very old range in which we build fires using logs and coal. It costs A FORTUNE to run. Over a weekend we could get through 2-3 bags of coal, and a net of logs. Definitely more expensive than gas, but so much more characterful.

It's really bad for your neighbours to burn anything treated, like fence panels. It's also not great to burn wood slowly, as it's not good for the chimney or the particulate output.

Basically, it is expensive if you buy your wood.

We run our own business and use a supplier who makes a product for us in beech. We buy huge bags of offcuts from him around £20 each and they are incredible to burn as they are tinder dry and it's hardwood so gives off a good heat. May be worth seeing if any local tradesmen sell the same?

We live somewhere where most of the wood has to be shipped so it’s more expensive. If I was paying the prices quoted on here it wouldn’t seem so bad!

Shop around and order a few tons at a time (not ‘1 ton bags’ that tend to be a good deal less firewood than a ton, usually the empty bags are sized for a ton of sand) but a few tons of wood either weighbridged into a tipper or ton pallets of coal/briquettes.

Our open fire burning full chat by day and banked down at night goes through 25kg of coal in 36 hours. A multi fuel stove should be much more efficient. With a bit of haggling and buying in bulk (a few tons at a time) £220 a ton delivered is doable here which works out cheaper than heating oil to keep the house as warm. If you need palletised delivery you may pay closer to £300 a ton.