Solid fuel stove for central heating

[Horehound]

What are the pros and cons to this kind of central heating system?

Viewing a house tomorrow and I want to be able to ask questions about it!

OP when you say stove is it a woodburner? Ie heats the room and drives and the radiators? Or is it a solid fuel boiler? Sorry I’m not very technically minded although have lived with both of those systems. Both are hard work and inherently dirty!

It’s not just the lighting/ keeping them lit it’s the chopping and stacking of wood/ fuel and bringing it into the house. Woodburners are lovely and we wouldn’t be without ours, but I wouldn’t want to have to rely on it for central heating.

@Daisydoesnt

Yeh that's what I'm worried about.
It says on the home report "wood burner back boiler" and on the photos and in the schedule there's two wood burners so I imagine they are just wood burning stoves but then heat the boiler? Is that how it works?

And if so, yeh does that mean the stove needs to be lit constantly even in summer?!

There are two log houses completely chock full of wood which will be why if the house runs on it lol

And is it cheaper than mains gas?! More eco friendly or what's the benefit of them?

Definitely not cheaper than mains gas! We have a combination system with a stove with a backburner plumbed into the heating but with an oil boiler plumbed into the system as well. I wouldn't like to be relying on just the stove. It takes a long time from scratch to heat the water and then start heating the radiators. Nightmare if you go away for a couple of days in winter. Long time to heat the house again and worry of frozen pipe damage.

Mmm ok thanks.
Yes realised it wouldn't be cheaper than mains gas after I posted lol. Though we are on LPG right now so maybe cheaper than that anyway.
I saw they also wrote something about gas bottles bit I have a feeling that's for the cooker.
Hmm lots to think about. I love the house but the heating does sound like a faff

So under "services" where it says gas/log they've written gas bottles. Then later on in the questionnaire for central heating that's where they wrote the bit about wood burner back boiler.
If the gas bottles are a backup then maybe that will be ok but I imagine the same issue of heating the house from scratch if you go away as you won't want the gas bottles "on" all the time of you're away.

Calorgas heaters as a backup possibly? I'd imagine bottles would be too expensive to use often. Wood is generally cheaper for us than oil, so most years we use the stove for most of the heating and the oil to top up, but the price of oil has dropped really low at the moment so mainly using the oil boiler. Although I have to say I quite like the wood and don't mind cleaning it out. Unlike coal, which I fucking hate!!

OP growing up my parents had a big woodburner in the sitting room which had a back plate boiler. It heated the hot water for baths etc and also for the radiators. The sitting room was always like an oven but the rest of the house was bloody freezing; to get enough heat so the rads would get warm, you need to have the fire roaring! It’s definitely not ideal.

They also had an electric immersion so in the summer you could just put the immersion on for an hour which heated hot water for baths, but no radiators. There was also an electric towel rail in the bathroom to air bath towels, and a tumble dryer for drying/ airing clothes in the summer.

Interestingly, they have in the last couple of years moved to a similar sized house which has mains gas heating and their overall heating/ electric costs have gone down. I think that was the electric immersion, tumble drying and electric towel rail bumping things up.

OP don’t underestimate the work involved with log-fired anything. It takes bloody ages to stack logs, and it’s back breaking. My dad used to carry down a large bag of logs every day which they’d get through to get the house warm. It would have taken me two trips to bring in the same amount of wood - and you have to do that every day.

In our house which we have woodburners as well as central heating, we get through a fraction of the wood, but then ours isn’t driving a back plate boiler..

Right so we viewed the house and want to offer!
I'm hearing what your saying and yes the set up is the same with using the immersion heater for water through the summer.

But we don't see this necessarily as the home we'd stay in forever so I think we can deal with the stove for 10 yrs or so or we will install an oil tank and change the boiler.

How exciting! That’s a great update OP. It’s good that you are going into it aware what’s involved and as you say you can always change to oil if you don’t get on with the current set up.

Wishing you the very best of luck

Thank you :)

Just an update to say we offered 346k and they've rejected. It's on at offers over 330 and that's what the home report is valued at. Apparently they want closer to 360. They've set a closing date. Don't think we will increase our offer in fact might just leave it! I am not a fan of greediness!

Wow! Where in the country are you that people are still expecting a big whack above offers over!? Hopefully you'll still get it for what you've offered!

We are in Angus @micaschist and I think they might have made a mistake rejecting our offer. They have four notes of interest so have scheduled a closing date for next week but I know two people made offers just over asking... I called the estate agent, told them the offer I made is now completely off the table and I won't be making an offer in the closing date.
The house is only a three bed and yes, it has been done nicely, its just not worth 360 or even 350!
I think they are about to have a shock tbh! And if they do get it, good for them but to us it's too much. We will just keep looking, there's always another house :)

You aren't that far from me. I'm a bit further north. I think they might be disappointed too! Sounds like the right decision you've made.

So in the end we did make an offer for closing but we reduced it quite a lot. If we got the house for our offer price we'd be happy but I doubt we will "win".
Also viewed a house in Montrose a few days ago and absolutely loved it. I want it over the other one actually but my husband is torn. This new one will go way over asking too but it starts off from a lower value than the first one I've been talking about so we could actually go quote high with it if we want.
It's such a frustrating but exciting time!

It’s unlikely you would be allowed to install an oil fired boiler in 10 years. They are being phased out. Have you read about this? Oil boilers are very 20th century so you need to revise your heating ideas. Preferably to air source heat pumps. I assume you do care about global warming?

Hi @PresentingPercy I currently do have an air sourced heat pump to heat my swimming pool actually so that is a good suggestion thanks.
Actually after posting I realise do hate oil as it really smells, other houses in my village have oil and i can't stand the smell but lpg, like we are currently on, could be an option too.
The post isn't about saving the environment but I'm sure you'll be glad to know we are moving to be closer to work so instead of us having two cars and driving for 40 mins each way every day our commute will now be 5 mins with one car. So there's a bonus. Now go away and patronise somebody else. Jeez.

There are grants around in England for fitting heat pumps, quite likely to be similar in Scotland? Unless the house is well insulated, a heat pump might not do the whole lot, but you could keep stoves to top ip in the coldest weather maybe? And it would make the hot water a lot cheaper compared to the immersion.

That said, sounds like you prefer the othet house anyway

Oh we would deffo keep the drives they are skandi and gorgeous. It would just be good to have a second option to otherwise we will be coming home to a cold house and having to light the fired etc before we get heat.

I'll have a look and see if there are Scottish grants etc.
Yes the house is actually incredibly well insulated.

I do prefer the other one..I'm going to put in an offer on it tomorrow :)

I know you might not be getting the house but my 2p worth anyway.

No mains gas in our village. I'm on lpg at the moment which is expensive but obviously convenient as can have normal heating and hot water.

Before this we were on solid fuel for around 10 years. It could be a pain, it takes a long time to heat the system through from cold and when we went away in winter I would turn the stop cock off and drain the system because nobody wants a flooded house from a burst pipe. I also grew to hate having to get up to a cold house because although the fire would be banked and not go out overnight you still had to get up, riddle the ash and open the air inlets to get it going. Plus having to fill the coal bucket twice a day involved going outside.

However. It is efficient. Your room gets heated at the same time as your water. In winter you never run out of hot water. It works best keeping the house at a constant temp which is nice. Once you get in a routine is pretty easy. I would open the air inlets when I got up, go shower and when I got out the fire would be going nicely so I'd fill it with fuel and turn it down. Didn't have to touch it again until evening when I'd turn it up for a nice fast burn for a few min then bank it up and damp it down.

Main advice would be buy a spare stove glass and rope kit for the door. My glass broke in that extreme winter 10 years ago and due to the chaos we couldn't get a new one for around 2 weeks.

I've thought about air source heat pump for this house but I'm not sure how they cope with this kind of house, age, layout etc. I worry it wouldn't be enough.

Our central heating for a three bedroom semi/ cottage has been a multi fuel stove for thirty three years. We had two stoves in that time the first very attractive arched doors and swans. The second is more modern to look at and super efficient. Never thought of it as a big problem in winter we banked it up went to work all day and it was usually still on when I came in. Good dry and seasoned logs are the key. Mix of semi anthracite and phurnacite to use to bank up before work and again on going to bed. During very cold weather some added to the logs. Only a problem when persisting down with rain. I fill the wheel barrow and bring it to the back door it doesn’t take long. We have an immersion heater connected too so it can be used in the summer when we turn our heating off and ours is a thick stone cottage. We have recently bought an Everhot for when we get older as it offers some heat through the house instead of the solid fuel Rayburn. We live in the country so the odd fallen tree over the road and branches brought back after a walk supplement a roadside delivery.
Questions I would ask is how old are the stoves?
Good luck.

Uft both offers rejected.we went 30k over on the second house but they said they appreciated the offer but as it wasn't officially on the market yet they want to test the waters. They may come back to us...

The first house that you didn’t get is indeed lovely OP (I live in Angus so found it easily online), I counsnt be doing with stoves that power the central heating though....supplement yes, but not solely power, imagine the amount of logs you would use. You are absolutely right that there will be another house, the right house. Best of luck with the search.