Anyone have solid fuel powered central heating?

[LadyThompson]

House we have just bought is in a village where there is no gas and the current central heating is run from a stove in the kitchen which burns on anthracite (or wood, if one wants to). Some people in the village use oil powered central heating, but to install this from scratch would apparently be expensive and disruptive. So, am I better staying with the solid fuel? It's just...I am worried about lack of hot water, nice hot radiators etc

We have solid fuel I love it. We burn coal at the moment although I would much prefer wood but we can't afford to build a store yet. This is our first winter with it and it is the warmest house I have ever had. Once you get to grips with it it is wonderful. We have had a few problems with it but it is all fixed now.

Our set up is a stove in the dining room which heats the hot water tank. We then have an override system which means that when the tank reaches a set temperature a pump comes on and starts to pump water round the radiators. This means the stove is no longer heating the tank (otherwise it would just boil over) but is heating the water going round the heating system.

We have an immersion heater in the tank too so during the summer we just put that on for half an hour or so each afternoon which heated enough water for the dcs bath adn for the washing up.

When it cold cooler int he Autumn I became an expert at putting enough fuel on the stove to heat the hot water tank but not trigger the heating as the stove itself did a great job of heating the downstairs. Obviously this gave us all the hot water we needed.

At the moment the fire is lit first thing and we let it die down by our bedtime and turn the pump off. We don't need to keep it on overnight although it is perfectly possible to do so. You don't need to pay it all that much attention, once it is hot in the morning you can shove enough fuel for the day on and leave it on a slow burn.

Our radiators get nice and toasty and the hot water is limitless when the stove is going and boiling hot.

We have an electric shower. This is great int he summer of course but seems pointless in the winter when we have a constant hot water supply, when I can afford it I am going to get a shower put in that runs off the tank.

Whe I say we had problems with it I mean because the stove was old and had not been cared for. Find out the name of a good engineer to give it a proper service, check the thermostat and all the seals etc before you move in so it is good to go when you need it.

I could have written your OP so many years ago. And probably add that we though it was lovely to have to have the fire burning most of the time, it made it look sooo romantic!

We lasted a few months, one day I decided to stay at home and try to find out what it took to keep the house at a nice temperature. Nine buckets of coal later, and me shovelling at the fire throughout the entire day (a spring day BTW) convinced us that we didn't have the time or the inclination to cope with that.

We only started to enjoy our house when we got a different central heating system. Before then, it was so cold all the time we barely spent time in it.

If it's any help, our village has no mains gas, and we use oil fired central heating. We didn't install it, but certainly running it isn't much of a hassle at all. The difference is that you have to remember to order oil supplies, but I'm now signed up to a village oil co-op, and get an email once a month asking if I want to buy oil that month. Then the oil co phones me and I pay over the phone, and then they come and top up oil while I'm at work.

A neighbour uses wood pellets for central heating, and we thought seriously about a ground source heat pump when we moved here, but realised it wouldn't work for a listed building with original floors.

After years hauling in coal, DH's gran got oil installed a couple of years ago (aged 90!) - as far as I know it wasn't too disruptive, but I guess the expense is that of a new heating system - so several thousand pounds. Why don't you try the current system for a while and see how it goes?

Many, many places don't have mains gas and there are lots of other options (all of which are looking increasingly appealing with all this stuff in the press about the nation only having 8 days gas supplies !).

Check out Warm Front to see if you are entitled to any grants towards central heating. We had someone come out from them to see the house and they are able to do loads for us (sealing windows, doors, smoke alarms, roof insulation, new boiler if ours breaks) for free, and a friend had them out who has no central heating, and they are having oil-fired central heating fitted for free. There are maximum income requirements though so you may not qualify.

Thank you people (hello dear Indith! How are you?) but I am puzzled at the difference in experience of Indith and Mongolia!

I think we will have to give it a try...won't be moving in until at least March anyway...

I'm quite puzzled too! We burn 3 fairly small buckets of coal a day at the moment. Size of house perhaps? Ours is an old 2 up 2 down late 1890s terrace with a extension for the kitchen. If you have a look in ethical living there was a thread not that long ago about how much wood people used and costs which may be of some help. If you are moving in March then you will have some nice cool Spring evenings to see how you like it and the summer to make any chnages if you decide to get oil or gas installed (we have no mains gas either but a lot of houses have bottled gas) Of course it is more work than gas but I certainly don't shovel coal all day.

We are fine thank you, I lurk occasionally Dd is fab and a law unto herself

Ooh, bottled gas - hadn't thought of that! I am really heartened by what you say, Indith. Although this is a higgledy piggledy, irregular shaped 4 bedroomed cottage, though it is a terrace. Glad you are fine, do pop in and see us now and then

Thank you everybody for your comments. I am still a bit apprehensive but think we are just going to have to give it a whirl and see how we go.

A house we looked at but didn't buy had bottled gas. They had a wood burner in the living room which they said heated most of the house so their gas consumption was very low, just hot water and a little bit of heat if very cold.

The only thing I really miss about not having gas is the hob, a gas hob is so much nicer than electric!

My parents had solid fuel (anthracite) heating for many years. The only problem with it was that is was a buger to light when it went out However, the house was always toasty and plenty of hot water. It ran through the summer too, to heat the water.

The upstairs bathroom was the 'outlet' radiator, when the 'excess' heat went (can you tell I don't really understand this?) so the bathroom was always warm, even in the middle of a winter's night. My parents have gas now, and my mum misses the warm bathroom for the middle-of-the-night loo trip.

We had 3 good sized bedrooms, a huge dinning kitchen and a living room. The windows were those beautiful Georgian windows with small glass panels. When it was windy, the curtains would move with the windows closed! but removing them would mean removing most of the charm.

I guess that if you are at home most day, you may manage ok, but, if you work during the day, perhaps it would be too much to come to a cold house at the end of the day, which will take a while to warm up.

When we checked, the best option was oil but because of building regulations we were not allowed to put an oil tank. At the time, it was cheaper to get bottled gas than put electric heating, but nowadays, I'm almost sure the electric heating would be cheaper.

In terms of the work to change it... well, it was not much of a problem they removed the backboiler but used all the existing plumbing and radiators.

I guess that one of the reason why our system was so inefficient was that it was an open fire. The stove may make things much better.

As you are not moving straight away, perhaps you can test it during the spring and summer, and if it is too much, book someone to change it in early autumn.

The anthracite boiler in my parents' house was lit constantly - it had a hopper that you poured the fuel in, then it fed slowly down into the fire, so no problem with coming home to a cold house. 'Twas my DBro's chore to keep it filled up

Open fire is pretty pointless in terms of heating anything apart from the immediate 20cm surrounding it. Lovely to look at though
We recently installed a faaaantastic [can't you tell how much I love the thing] multifuel stove and it's doing a splendid job heating the whole house, well, with the exception of the ground floor as the beaut is sitting on first.
We have a massive open space and stairs all over, huge windows, one whole wall is glass, yet even on the second floor the average temp hovers around 18C. Haven't had heating on since November.
We feed The Über-God Of Fire and Snugness with smokeless coal and heat logs that are lot cheaper than wood. The heat logs are 100% hardwood and contain less than 10% moisture hence they create obscene amount of heat and give incredible display. Ours look like regular round logs with dark 'bark'.
So, try these or how about wood pellets for a stove? Cheap as chips and tres' effective.

It was an open fire with a back boiler, obviously, the water in the radiator was not warmed by room temperature!

Gosh yes Mongolia the open fire will have been useless! The glass on our stove broke a while ago so is was basically an open fire for a few days and it never actually managed to get things hot enough to trigger the heating.

Even without a hopper with a good stove you don't need to come back to an empty house, so long as you can set it to slow burn (by shutting off most of the oxygen) you can fill it with fuel and it will still be lit when you come home.

This is all really good info - thanks. I have just shown it all to DP.

We had solid fuel heating via back boiler and radiators when we moved here and then installed oil central heating a few months later. I personally found it a bit of a pain to need to keep adding logs/coal and it was horrible if you went out and came back to a cold house because the first thing you had to do was start a fire.

When we changed over to oil it wasn't a big deal really - took about 3 days iirc and although we went to stay with my mum while it was done that was only because we only had one room downstairs so had nowhere to escape from while they took out the old stove and bricked it up/plastered over the chimney breast. Cost about £3000 iirc including oil tank, boiler, extra radiator and water tank but this was about 7 years ago.

Oooh I like the look of the heat logs, buying by the pallet makes them about the same price as coal but without the environmental implications. Mind you then there is the whole storage issue again though I guess if the coal store were cleaned out much of the shed stuff could go in there and then heat logs could be stored in the shed

May have to get a few to see what they are like since my cost calculations are based on their 1.5 hour burning claim.

The heat logs we use are shrink wrapped by 6, weigh about 1kg per pack. The 1040kg pallet costs £265. We keep them on the back yard under a plastic sheet - just in case there's a whole in the wrapping and bring them in by 2 packs i.e. dozen logs, last us 2 days. Brilliant. However, do check out the wood pellet stoves as well.
We buy them from Liverpool something something... Think they sell on eBay as well.

That is 10kg per pack of 6.... [dooooh]

Rollmops, they sounds brilliant. Could you give me the exact name as I want to look into them.

Cerrrist, too many hot toddies and wholes appear .....(that's supposed to read hole for those in doubt)
It's called Liverpool Wood Pellets, just Google them. It would be slightly cheaper to buy the same amount on eBay, search for 1040kg Wood Briquettes-Wood Fuel-Fire Wood-Fuel Logs.
Hope you'll enjoy them, we are addicted