Woodburner owners

[Brixtonvssouthcroydon]

Are you happy with it?
Our new place has a biggish living room and not sure radiators will be enough to keep it warm in very cold days
We are considering a wood burner (using it with smokeless fuel) but wondering if it is actually quite fastidious (time to light it up, feeding it, ordering and storing fuel etc) and in practise it won't be used very much.

this is where you loose credibility, jumping to silly conclusions, my neighbours are a good five min walk away and also have them, as we live semi rurally. So yes, it is a personal decision to have a defra approved stove, and burn seasoned wood.

I got one put in when I moved to my house 12 years ago. Had to take out a condemned gas fire, so only other choice was open fireplace, or block the chimney up. We probably have on 1 or 2 nights in winter and it has been useful to have an additional heat source when the boiler broke. Didn't use it at all when the kids had just learned to walk as it seemed too risky, even with a fire guard. I do love it, but don't think I would install one if I was buying a house now, as the price has gone up a lot.

We also have good insulation and solar panels.

Depends on what room, what size stove and where you live. We live in a rural area, have close ish neighbours but plenty of space around us and use our stove as required in the winter. Maybe twice a week max, once temperatures drop properly (still too warm most days). Lots of people don't install the right sized stove for the space they are heating so either end up too small or too big which is a waste. The regulations were supposed to change that but we still still poorly installed stoves in houses near us. Maintenance wise it needs sweeping twice a year, and we clean it once a week. Not big in the scheme of things and it is lovely to have on as it heats most of the downstairs.

Buy the best you can and install it properly. And I wouldn't bother in a more urban area.

It seems absolutely crazy that we have spend years implementing low emission zones to improve air quality for cars, only to wreck the air quality again by burning wood.

Yes I agree. There is absolutely no need for wood burning stoves in urban areas.

I think it depends whether you live in an urban environment or rural.

I'm very rural (no gas), we have oil heating. I love my multi-fuel stove as a top up, it warms the bones of the house, it looks gorgeous and for the amount we use it it is very cost effective.

Any pollution would be to us and 1 neighbour only, and they also have an open fire.

It's a renewal source of fuel, we have plenty of trees growing to replace usage. And has been used for millennia so I don't think in our situation it offers and particular environmental issues

Absolutely love ours. We don’t have mains gas so it’s either electric or oil or wood for heating.

We have them in both our houses (another Mumsnet crime!). Seasoned wood for them costs around £450 a year. They are all very easy to light and keep going - nothing like a toddler. We just add a couple of logs every hour or so. The largest one (7.5kw) heats the whole house to 18 degrees, and it’s soapstone and heat retaining storage keep it warm all night.

You don’t actually need to clean the ash out of the modern ones.

Ours are all from Contura so they look absolutely gorgeous too.

I see the JUST STOP FUN brigade are out again.
Is there nothing they won't make an issue of?

But it's not an opinion is it? It factual. Wood Burners are really bad for health and environment.
Yes, lots of things are bad for you, but this is one where there are lots of less harmful ways of achieving the same aim - heating your home - so if you can make the healthier and more environmentally beneficial choice, why wouldn't you?

Obviously if you live in the middle of nowhere and this is your only way of heating your house, crack on!

They may look gorgeous but from a health perspective I wouldn't get one. For the majority of people there are safer and healthier ways of heating a house.

We're rural and live in an old house with no gas or oil connected, so no boiler, and we burn wood to keep warm. Without burning wood, the house gets very cold and if we go away in winter, it's usually about 8C when we get home and takes a few days to warm up again. I'm in my 60s and have arthritis so find it hard to live in a cold house.

We cut the wood ourselves and it's stored for 2-3 years before using so it's just the effort to process it all, but thankfully OH does most of that. Fixing the fire for the evening is no more onerous than doing some washing up.

Big sitting room needs big radiators and then you should be fine. ☺️

We also wanted one but were put off by the health risks. I still do light one in a holiday cottage, but more as entertainment than for heat.

What was fastidious an autocorrect for? Faff?

nooe it’s not. Two bed mid terrace with up to new regs insulation everywhere. Cheaper to buy seasoned wood by the crate load than heat it by gas. By a couple of hundred quid a year cheaper than gas and that’s before adding in servicing costs - then it’s nearer £300 cheaper to burn wood per year.

I have an air quality monitor, to measure damp and also PM 2.5, and air quality is okay when the stove is lit.

@Alphabet1spaghetti2 I don't have any skin in the game here other than I noted the report with interest and I guess everyone's costs will be slightly different depending on the house type and whether you are installing the stove or if it's already in a property when you move in. The OP would be paying out for installation costs so its unlikely to be more cost effective for her circumstances and as it sounds like alternative heating sources are available for her property, boosting what's there seems more sensible than adding an additional heat source. The report highlights a few different cost scenarios:

The study found that when a household used a newly installed, Defra-approved wood burner for 20% of its heat, the yearly cost, including installation, was £2,028-£2,204 – 24% more than running a typical gas boiler.

The cost increased to almost 50% more expensive where a household used newly installed wood burners for 80% of its heat.

Even where the wood burner was already installed and 80% of the heat was provided by a gas boiler, the annual costs were still 15% higher than gas.

In all scenarios, wood burners were more expensive than air source heat pumps.

We have one and its more of a weekend/ambience thing. We only burn pinikay logs which are under 8% moisture which can get expensive.

We also bought an air quality monitor and yes, the AQI and PM2.5 does triple when we have it going to around 130 AQI however its still well below the readings we get when we cook.

When we cook a roast, the AQI readings max out at 500 AQI and take hours to get back under 50 AQI...so on balance, for the amount of time we actually use it, I dont think its that bad.

Lots of things cause pollution. Holidays abroad cause pollution. The emissions from countries like China and the U.S. will dwarf the impact of a couple of wood burners in the Uk. My mum and dad have a Woodburner. It’s so cozy and warm in their living room, you can’t smell anything when it’s on and it’s easy to control. If I was able to afford one and my house was suited to one I would get one.

You can't smell carbon monoxide, but it'll still kill you....

@Maybenowisthetime the cost if a new combi gas boiler (just the boiler no radiators) is currently the same as the cost of a brand new wood burner and flue including labour.
our wood burner will heat the entire house, and is way cheaper than our brand new boiler to run. If I added in the cost of using gas for heating water and cooking on th job - then my previous given savings of £300 per year would absolutely rocket to more than double. Mains gas is expensive. Bottled gas even more so (thankfully no longer in bottled!)

It does make me want to know who’s behind these so called expert studies and really want to know if they are at all linked to gas suppliers in anyway shape or form. Especially given that a study out earlier this year cited gas as being a major pollutant in homes and calling for gas heating and cooking appliances to be phased out- yet that study seems to be being quietly snowballed as has the push to convert all home to hydrogen instead of gas heating. …

As there is to get to work, or go on holiday, get your shopping, even buying clothes . I’m guessing you do all of that..

You might find it cheaper to upsize your radiators or get some thick curtains. Woodburners in built up areas are bad news for air quality so it would be quite an outlay for occasional use (until they hopefully get banned in smokeless zones).

I am not convinced that wood is cheaper, but it is hard to compare.

The energy value varies considerably on how dry it is and the efficiency is lower than a gas boiler maybe 80% compared with 90% for a boiler.

A kg of dried wood is about 5 kwh, so a tonne is about 5000 kwh.

The price of wood seems to vary a lot. but you can get a metric tonne dried on the net for £500, which works out to be about 10p per kwh if you assume 5kwh per kg. It seems you rarely get an energy spec on any wood that is sold and often don't even get a weight, just a "big bag".

Gas is about 7p per kwh currently, but then you also need to add in the standing charge which is about 30p per day.

I don't see the running costs that much different, stoves you have the chimney clean, cleaning and firelighters, which probably add up to similar to a boiler service per year (i would say approx. £100). If the boiler starts to break down obviously the price for parts goes up. But then a boiler probably lasts 10 years without parts, not sure how long a wood burning stove is good for.

So gut feeling is that in energy terms the costs are probably comparable. If I had to speculate I would say gas is cheaper.

None of those things damage my lungs or raise my risk of demential that I know of.

I don’t understand those who say it burns through loads of wood? We have two burners at each gable end of our old, detached cottage. We o lay ever have one lit at a time but at least one is on 3/4 times per week usually from when the kids get home until bed. We order a 1sq meter load of seasoned firewood per year at approx £250 and it is forklifted directly into our carport (easy!)
mid you have the air dampener on low once the fire is engaged then it will burn slowly and hot but without that intensity that ploughs through logs. It’s a bit of an art but I take great pleasure in sitting by a nicely, gently roasting fire.

after a couple of hours the downstairs sits at about 22-23 degrees. One of the rooms has no doors so spreads through the downstairs. The other room does have a door so the heat can get too intense if you shit the door.

Really, you dont use public roads with cars, vans and buses on them, you dont use public transport, nothing is delivered to you, you’re completely self sufficient and only idle your way across rural fields.

aye.

I use what I have to to live and get around etc. Things I don't really have much of a choice over. I have a choice over whether to install something in my house which could cause long term damage to my health and my children's health, so I've made the choice not to. Aye.

@Maybenowisthetime you quote something saying that in all cases woodburners are more expensive than heat pumps.
Our woodburner is 10 years old. Cost about £4k to put in I think. We use free wood (seasoned for 2 years). We are not on mains gas. Our woodburner beats all of our downstairs (open plan)

We looked into getting a heat pump. £15k installation plus electricity to run it.

I use what I have to to live

That's what those of us in old, cold homes are doing.