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Hi there, we designing a 100m squared strawbale home and are looking for how were going to set up our central heating and domestic hot water. Are there any good wood burners that can provide for both these needs or a wood stove we could cook from at the same time? Or possible a solar hybrid system? Any ideas gratefully recieved!! Nick

Talk to Nick 69, he was fantastic helping me with my heating issues!

SusieGee wrote:We have two Clearview stoves which are excellent and the Company, which is based in Ludlow, are really really helpful and definitely worth a call for a chat. However, a word of caution take a serious look into the Building Regulations reference chimneys/flues as we've discovered that if the flue is uninsulated i.e., exposed in the room it must be three times flue diameter away from any combustible materials. This could mean with a 7" flue that your stove has to be 21" away from the wall! Not insurmountable but it is better to grasp this particular nettle before you plan the positioning of any stoves - again the guy at Clearview was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. http://www.clearviewstoves.com/

Also something I bang on about frequently is check if oyu are in a smoke control zone as this will stop you cooking on wood.

Big Al wrote:

SusieGee wrote:We have two Clearview stoves which are excellent and the Company, which is based in Ludlow, are really really helpful and definitely worth a call for a chat. However, a word of caution take a serious look into the Building Regulations reference chimneys/flues as we've discovered that if the flue is uninsulated i.e., exposed in the room it must be three times flue diameter away from any combustible materials. This could mean with a 7" flue that your stove has to be 21" away from the wall! Not insurmountable but it is better to grasp this particular nettle before you plan the positioning of any stoves - again the guy at Clearview was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. http://www.clearviewstoves.com/

Also something I bang on about frequently is check if oyu are in a smoke control zone as this will stop you cooking on wood.

I don't think it would stop you cooking on wood. You'd just have to ensure that you buy a clean burn stove.

Hello there ,

dont know your location , but if its the south of the uk or ireland me thinks a stanley errigal
or esse ironheart would do the job , especially if you are doing strawbale,
irish plumbers ( the good ones ) are good at connecting ranges to storage heating and so on .

regards ,

Paul

ps what about showing pics of your building progress ?

gaiafarm wrote:Hi there, we designing a 100m squared strawbale home .....

Wow thats huge. I assume you mean 100 square metres.

I'll get my coat

indy wrote:Talk to Nick 69, he was fantastic helping me with my heating issues!

Thankyou, I do try

Thare are MANY different Stoves and Ranges that can provide you with Heat/Hot Water and Cooking. I can help more if you give a budget for the stove.
I am an installer and have solid fuel heating, water, cooking and another stove in the living room that used to do the water. Also whats your rough location?

We use a Rayburn 355s and it is multi fuel, runs up to eleven radiators, has two ovens and a large hotplate. It needs a massive water tank but doesn't take long to heat up.
We use coal in the winter if we need to keep it in at night, but i prefer the wood which we use in the summer and if we can get it other times.
I hate the coal because it makes so much soot but the smokeless stuff is out of our price range.

Hi gaia,

Build it Solar has some good information about water heating with wood. There is some good safety information there so that your woodstove doesn't do this.
-Memphis Slim

SusieGee wrote:We have two Clearview stoves which are excellent and the Company, which is based in Ludlow, are really really helpful and definitely worth a call for a chat. However, a word of caution take a serious look into the Building Regulations reference chimneys/flues as we've discovered that if the flue is uninsulated i.e., exposed in the room it must be three times flue diameter away from any combustible materials. This could mean with a 7" flue that your stove has to be 21" away from the wall! Not insurmountable but it is better to grasp this particular nettle before you plan the positioning of any stoves - again the guy at Clearview was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. http://www.clearviewstoves.com/

There are twin walled flues that can be as close as 5cm to combustible materials, and don't need boxed it. They are pricey though.... it is what we are planning to go on our new/old woodburning cooker.

We are going for a solar/wood hybrid system but, as someone else already said, there are hundreds of stoves which can do the job.

we are going for wood and solar too - with ability to add in a boiler if thats not enough or we get old or summat ..

we plan to put in a rayburn

I've recently bought a Nordica Thermo Suprema multifuel stove with cooker and boiler for hot water/heating. They are sold via Broseley Fires in the UK. We are having a great deal of trouble commissioning the stove. We have linked it in to a pressure system with an auxillary traditional oil boiler which we were told is perfectly possible. The problem is that the stove is very slow to react when the hot water or heating circuits start to get anywhere near their desired operating temperatures and it subsequently overheats and blows the safety valve. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Our current working theory is that the heat exchanger on the oil boiler has a capacity of about 0.5 litre. The Wood stove has a 25 litre (yes, twenty five!) capacity. This means the circulation pump needs to be seriously uprated to be able to shift all that water. (I am awaiting delivery of a semi industrial pump to test the theory.) These stoves are used a lot on the continent but those systems tend to not to run radiators but are under floor systems which tend to need far greater volumes of water and therefore bigger pumps. If anyone knows anything on the subject I'd be delighted to hear from you!!

We heat mostly with wood, with electric baseboards as backup. The wood stove is in the basement, and all the living areas are on the floor above it. We only use the electric heat when we are not home or first thing in the morning while the wood stove heats up.

We were surprised to find that the basement stove configuration worked well for heating the whole house. The stove is in the same room as the basement stairs, and the stairwell is the only opening for air circulation between levels. We use a ceiling fan in the living room to help distribute the heat in the main level, but the natural convection without the fan is still reasonable during power failures.

Since it is a partial basement, and the rest of the house has just a crawlspace, I insulated the crawlspace and installed a thermostatically-controlled fan to circulate hot air from near the stove to the crawlspace. It does a good job of keeping the floors in the main floor warm.

What we like about the basement stove configuration is that you don't get the oppressive radiant heat of the stove in the living room. The radiant heat is confined to the basement, where the cats can enjoy it, and the rest of the house is heated by convective warm air, which is much more comfortable.

Thanks for the reply. The new DSA model is supposed to be specifically for pressure systems and comes with the necessary valve arrangements. Broseley say that there are still very few systems out there like I'm doing - actually I think mine is the first because their technical support has been very vague! The stove has some nice features, like a thermostatically controlled air intake which attempts to snuff the fire out when the boiler temp hits 80 degrees! Nice try, but really doesn't react fast enough. If I ever get it working reliably I'll let you know!!! Not sure I would recommend it though. I need other safety features like a UPS to run the pump if the electricity cuts out

Probably out of date now but i just joined; I am planning on installing such a system that i will probably run off a Godin or Esse cooking range with back boiler. Someone reccomended a esse ironheart which the manufacturer says can only heat one radiator but a friend has one that is happily running 3 rads and heats their hot water. Should be enough for a 100sqm strawbale house. Amazing bts of kit.

Finally i also found a guy in france on a forum who made his own heat exchanger and fitted it into a normal wood burner and combined the system with solar. Bearing in mind one of these back boiler ranges costs at least £1500-£3000, a home made heat exchanger is a tiny fraction of that and could help those on a tight budget. Here is the link (in french but i can translate if any needs) http://plomberie.bricovideo.com/chauffa ... eminee.htm

Cheers