Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,
We have a small piece of woodland from which we supply logs for an open fire. We're thinking of installing a wood burning stove to drive a small Central Heating system with logs from the same source. Suprisingly I understand the technology but would like to know how much effort is required to keep these systems running, ie. how often they need loading and how long they can be kept alight? If anyone has any experience with these systems we'd be most grateful for any feedback, the salemen say it's easy.

Lumberjohn

can't help with your question, sure someone here can, but just wanted to say welcome

Hello & welcome

Our woodburning stove has a wrap around back boiler that heats water and 9 radiators. It puts out 11 - 13kw at full pelt but it rarely needs to - never that cold. It is possible to bank it up, cut back the air and it will stay in all night but we usually let it go out when we go to bed and then don't relight it 'til we're ready to come in/settle down for the evening.

We try to eek out the wood, not put on too much at a time. Also using a lot of recycled wood at the moment so we have to feed it quite often.

We also have solar panels which provide all our hot water april-oct unless overcast and on sunny days in winter. We also have an oil fired boiler for when all else fails. We also have a Dunsley neutralizer that sorts out possible conflicts between the systems.

Hope this helps

I think you have already covered the most difficult part in finding a sustainable scource of wood and experience cutting and storing it I feel that the huge amount of wood required is the biggest problem . You will need most likly to feed it every hour or so and its difficult to keep it in over night unless you stack it with some hard wood . The other big draw back may be that you also require an electric pump to circulate the system so in a power cut

no problems in a power cut if you have the foresight to install a ups with a bigger battery........
(uninterruptable power supply)
If you have the wood, you'd be barking mad to use any other fuel - many people leave woodburners alight for months at a time - if you have a back boiler, get solar hot water heating and the appropriate thermal store too, and you've got hot water sorted for the year too

Ahhh Martin you've just sorted out my dilemma. We're going to ditch our oil-fired boiler and install a Wamsler stove (like a rayburn) and I was not looking forward to the summer months because I didn't fancy having the stove lit all year round. Solar panels hmmm.... I take it that it's best to get the whole thing done at the same time?

Anyone up here in Aberdeenshire know anyone that can fit this kind of thing?

would you like me to whistle up "one of ours?" in your area? (a small local company who won't do the hard sell!)
I'd recommend doing it in one fell swoop, that way it'll all be sized properly, and you'll get the proper thermal store (hot tank) and plumbing first time, which will save a small fortune

I'll send you a pm Martin