Is it possible to DIY fit a woodburner?

[demi]

if you've only got 4 rooms to heat and you're going to be changing your heating system anyway and money is not an issue then id say go for it!

our plans for our 2 up 2 down is to have downstairs open plan with the wood burning cooker heating the whole downstairs area and then feeding 3 radiators for the 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom up the stairs.

[scotsmart]

I wouldnt nessesarily say money wasnt an issue but i would rather try to install a more efficient system that will meet or surpass our needs than pay silly dear electricity bills that do not supply an even heat thoughout the property anyway, it might possibly due to the cost implications have to be done in stages i.e. stove then boiler & rads i dont know yet bu it certainly sounds like our ideal.

[Zech]

Oh well, if you're wanting to replace your heating anyway, then definitely a whole house heating system. I do know someone who heats her whole house from a stove in the living room, with no back boiler (the warm air just wafts around the house) but I think it depends very much on the layout of the house, as well as high levels of insulation, to make it work.

As for efficiency (i.e. amount of fuel needed), bear in mind that the more house you're trying to heat, the more fuel you'll need to burn. You say your friend has a stove that will run for a week on a bag of coal, but how much work is that stove doing? Heating one room? One room plus hot water? A whole house plus hot water?

Everyone told us that we'd burn a lot of wood in our stove (heating the whole house plus hot water, though we still have an electric shower at the moment), and we didn't really believe them. They were right! We got through the first load of wood (£70) in three weeks, which was a bit scary. I'm hoping it will improve when we finish the insulation, so we're not heating the garage etc. as well, and it would help if it was possible to buy wood that's actually dry, but even so, I don't think we're going to be saving much money with this system. Maybe when we get the solar panels installed that will help, though perhaps not at this time of year

[scotsmart]

Whilst obviously the cheaper an option a multi-fuel can be the better, but i would much prefer a far more controllable, heat efficient method of keeping the entire house at an even temp than that of the widely known wholly inefficient storage heating we currently have and a electric bill of about £100 a month to only heat correctly 1:2 our house i that all makes sense our hot water and such could stay on the economy tariff its currently on im assured the cheapest available currently if it would help with the general heating side of things ...

[merlin]

As Demi says, it's not rocket science. I have one with lots of rads from it it does the hot water as well when it is on in the winter.

[fruitcake]

http://www.backwoodsman-stoves.co.uk/ near Oban is tops. Vg info and great supplier!

[bonniethomas06]

Hi Scotsmart. Thought I had posted here already, but looks like it wasn't this thread. Have a look around the forum archive, I am sure there was a really good thread about fitting your own, and I posted a really long post about our experiences.

We fitted our logburner and flue liner ourselves, all of the connecting kit and the burner came to under £500 all in. We looked up the building regs and tried as much as possible to make it fit...admittedly we haven't had it tested yet by a HETAS engineer but we have CO detectors and so far so good! Best thing we ever did, it is a million times warmer than the open fire and way more efficient in terms of the number of logs we use.

Good luck!

[merlin]

I have just seen the price of logs in the UK

What we have learned over the years is that spending money on insulation is by far the best money spent. Of course you need fuel. We use wood, but I read a couple of years ago that dry wood (wood that has been sitting drying for a year produces 40% more energy.

We started last year getting two years worth, will post next year to see if I only use 40% of it lol.

Storage is the problem, not out here because space and out buildings are not an issue, but we recon on 18 cubics per year. This it the first year with insulation, and I can definatley say that we will be having wood left over, next year with dry wood, hell, i might be selling it back to the forest grid

[Jock719]

We've just installed a 12Kw Multifuel atove here at the Croft in Benderloch, Argyll...it wasn't straightforward as we had to remove a 50's open fireplace and wrap around boiler then plumb the multifuel stove boiler into the old system. There are a few pitfalls but we had professional help from a local installer who was superb. At the minute its running on windfall wood (chestnut and oak) with anthracite nuts to keep the heat up...Have got a forestry permit for collecting firewood which is £50 for 6 months so the economics are good.....its like having a blast furnace in the lounge when ye open the wee glass door !!