A ? to those who have a solid fuel range cooker........

[Elizabeth]

Please help

My husband and I are trying to gain info on different energy systems for our new home.

We are interested in knowing how often you stoke your Range.... As there are soooo many different variables (size of house, insulation, windows just for starters), and if you don't mind, please can you answer the following?


1. What range cooker do you have?

2. What fuel do you use?

3. Do you heat water?

4. Does it feed radiators? if so how many?

5. Do you supplement your hot water with an alternative energy source? Solar, Oil, Gas, Electricity?

MOST IMPORTANTLY

6. How often do you have to stoke the fire?

Thank you

[prison break fan]

Hi Elizabeth,I have a solid fuel Rayburn, which is absolute magic. I mostly burn wood on it with a shovel of Taybrite nuggets to keep it in overnight. It heats the water and runs three rads. If I am out all day I put another shovel of nuggets on, but mostly the wood keeps it going. I do all my cooking on it, and life just wouldn't be the same without it! pbf

[Elizabeth]

Hi PBF,

thanks for your answer.

Which Rayburn do you have?

[prison break fan]

It's a Rayburn Heatranger 355sfw if that is any help. It is the smaller one because the space was already there and to have the larger one, which will run more radiators would have meant a lot more building work. For many years I had an ancient Rayburn regent which did exactly the same, but because it had iron pipework finally rusted through, and spares couldn't be found. I was very sad when it died! I bought this one new, and it has been worth every penny. pbf

[Cligereen]

We have a Stanley range. It heats the water for the taps and also runs about 25 rads although they don't get too hot if all 25 are turned on! It will heat about 10 rads perfectly. So in the winter ie tonight we have oil on as well. The oil system is not part of the range, it's a seperate system.

We burn a mixture of wood and turf on the range. At night we fill the range, close the lower vent and it'll stay warm until about 3pm next day, when we shake the grate and reload it. The hot embers light the range within a few minutes.

We never stoke the range at all. We control the heat by opening and closing the vent below the firebox. The only time we kinda 'stoke it' is when we shake the grate to get rid of the ashes from the firebox into the pan below.

We do cook on it but not if we're in a hurry as the oven is 'slow' but the pans heat up well on the top.

Hope that helps.

[Elizabeth]

That is really helpful. Is the oil system inter-related to the range? I.e. does it heat the same water source for the rads as the range cooker?

What do you do if you go away for the night(s)?

[Cligereen]

Hi Elizabeth,

Yes, the range and the oil both heat the same water source. They both feed in to the hot water cylinder, but can be used independently or together.

If we go away for the night, the range will go out. Then we just empty the firebox and restart the fire using firelighters. It takes about 30 mins to get hot from scratch. We also have a circulating pump on the range which shoots the hot water round the rads (we don't need to use this pump for the oil system). After 30 mins of the range being relit, we turn on the pump and away we go with the hot water. If we turned the pump on straight away the rads would start cool and take a while to heat up.

Clig.

[JulieSherris]

Hi Elizabeth,

We have a Stanley range as well - we burn mostly peat turfs & (this year) unseasoned wood.
My Stan heats our hot water & deals with our radiators - we have 7 rads around the house - I also use Stan for all my cooking too.

I riddle the grate every now & again.... that's not much help, is it?
OK, first thing in the morning, the the vents are opened, the grate gets riddled & peats are put in... the ash pan is emptied..... the fire starts to blaze high within minutes, so it gets to work on the kettle.

Once the kettle has boiled, it gets refilled & put on the simmer plate for next time.....
More turfs/wood are added to nearly fill the firebox & the vents are closed slightly...
If I'm indoors, then roughly every hour, I check the firebox & add wood or turf as it needs it. If I go out, I just fill the firebox full & shut the vents right down.
In the evening, the ash pan is emptied again & Stan is riddled thoroughly again.
Through the evening, fuel is added when it's needed & the grate is riddled maybe twice until it's time for bed...
When I go to bed, the vents are shut right down & the firebox is filled to the top - next morning after a riddle, we're good to go again.

Hope this helps!
Julie.

[Elizabeth]

That is really helpful - thank you

[theabsinthefairy]

We have a Rayburn No2 from the 50s which we renovated with new bricks and rockwool and new stainless back and side panels.

Whilst I love it dearly and enjoy cooking on it - it does need to be fed every hour on wood and at least every 4 on coal, although it will keep in over night on coal and you relight on embers in the morning. The ash pan only needs to be emptied every 3 days or so.

It runs a couple of rads - which are trying to heat large bedrooms in a stone farmhouse with old fashioned mud and straw insulation in the loft.

The water tank it feeds needs at least 4 hours of heat to reach 60 degrees centigrade, it also has a solar panel attached to it to speed the heating and also to replace the rayburn heat in the summer (we do also have an electric element with a separate override switch should we need to use it when no other source of water heating is available).

The Rayburn heats our kitchen, we cook on , the secondary heat passes through to our daughter's room directly above it, and then there are the two rads. We do not have any other form of heating i.e. oil or gas (we do have small wood burners in the living room and in the bathroom).

We did try to leave the Rayburn on a thermo cycling system for the rads, but it did not flow fast enough, so we have a small pump attached, which we can turn on to push the water out of the back boiler quickly, then turn off and allow the water to thermo cycle around the rads. If the rads are off the hot water bypasses them and heads directly to the water tank in the attic.

Luck yous with solid fuel cookers you don't stand over all day - but having looked at them, I love the design and simplicity of my Rayburn.

Hope this helps.

[Elizabeth]

That's very helpful theabsinthefairy.

it also has a solar panel attached to it

Interested in finding more out about the solar panels you have to top up. We are considering solar to heat water in the summer and not having the Rayburn lit, but the system that Rayburn has introduced is sooooo expensive.

[theabsinthefairy]

We have what is in essence a navitron system (www.navitron.org.uk - solar water heating section - diy kits), only we bought our items individually rather than in kit form from various suppliers to keep the costs down. The panel came from navitron (when we lived in the UK they were based only a few miles away so we went direct to purchase the panel) we bought the 'brain' and the water tank from ebay and the pump here in France and then it's just metres of copper pipe and insulation!

I have not seen the Rayburn kits but if it is anything like the rest of their stuff it will be overpriced.

When we bought our Rayburn (ebay 99p!!!!!) we visited the factory direct to get the fire bricks and a new griddle - and had a good look at the new ranges - and I have to say I found the quality very disappointing for the best part of £5000-ish.