About to install a wood burning stove - advice needed

For many years Mr JG has wanted to install a wood burnnig stove in our dining room and at last it looks like this is about to happen.

We would be very glad of any help from those of you who already have stoves as to which one to buy.

I believe Clearview are considered to be the best, although a little more pricey.

Please can anyone give us some advice?

Jaded Green wrote:For many years Mr JG has wanted to install a wood burnnig stove in our dining room and at last it looks like this is about to happen.

We would be very glad of any help from those of you who already have stoves as to which one to buy.

I believe Clearview are considered to be the best, although a little more pricey.

Please can anyone give us some advice?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about different manufacturers. But I see you live in London. If you are in a smoke-controlled area (which you probably are) and you intend burning wood rather than smokeless fuel, make sure you get a model that is Defra approved for your area.

You will also need to consider what it's use is. If it is only to supplement an already efficient heating system (such as gas central heating), no point in going for a large model with high heat output. If you see it replacing your heating, at least for that room, or area, then you will need a stove capable of giving a suitable amount of heat. A good installer can advise on this, or you can get an idea for yourselves by doing a heat loss calculation on the room (heat loss calculators available online).

Can't think of anything else right now, but I'll add to it if I do.

Questions, questions ...

Your profile says you live in London, JG - are you in a smoke control area ? This affects your choice, see here. Some stoves need an optional "smokeless kit" - which is usually a means of obstructing the controls so you can't shut the air intakes below a preset minimum.

What type of stove, freestanding or inset, contemporary or traditional ? Do you have a "structural hearth" suitable to stand it on - if not you might look at types that need only a minimal superimposed hearth. How big is the room it will go in ? There are guides as to stove sizing about on the web. It is probably a worse mistake to select one too big than one too small - small fires in a big stove are hard to maintain. Is fitting a permanently open vent (air brick of some sort) acceptable to you - it's required for stoves over 5kW rating.

Although Clearview have a sort of cult status and prices to match, there are other makes that are pretty good too. Morso, Charnwood, Stovax, ... all make some good options.

Is your head spinning yet

[Aha. I see freebird has beat me to it - oh well, I've typed it now ...]

head is spinning - partly because I was flat out in bed yesterday with dizziness and am still below par and in bed today.

Thank you four your help. Apparently we can burn the right sorr of wood - according to its dryness.

We've been looking at Stovax too.

We have a fireplace with a solid hearth and a re going for a traditional look. We will still have one radiator in the room with thermostat.

I only know about Clearview because that's what we have. If you have the chance to visit their showroom in Ludlow it's a real experience; it's a beautiful house which has a different stove model in every room, and you can have a good look, see them in action and ask lots of questions. The local installer who put ours in knew which model would give the appropriate heat output for the size of our living room and was able to further explain the technique of using them efficiently. We bought it to supplement a Heath Robinson central heating system, and also becasue we knew that in a crisis we would always have a source of heat (we have constant powercuts here.) I don't know anything about other makes, but we would now always want to have a woodburner in any house we lived in.
(Hope you feel better JG by the way)

I weakened and lit up the stove last night.

It burned really well; I could shut the secondary air down to a minimum, and get those beautiful slow motion flames reaching high in the firebox; it burned for a quite a long time and warmed the room up well enough that I didn't have to restoke it.

Every year it is the same, in autumn I have the remains of the wood from the previous season, nicely dry, and it burns beautifully. Never need to do more than polish the glass with a bit of newspaper. Then, by sometime in the new year, I run out of the nice dry wood, and move on to stuff I've recently bought. Burns like a wet rag - hard to get alight at all, needs so much air to keep burning that the heat goes up the chimney, and the glass get blackened. A miserable experience.

... Which got me thinking. With really dry wood, lots of stoves work well, None like wet wood, no matter how fancy the design, and dry wood cannot be purchased easily, if at all. So, I reckon that, if you are spending a couple of thousand on a stove install, spending a bit of the money on the biggest log store you have space for is the best economy.

Chilli-head wrote:So, I reckon that, if you are spending a couple of thousand on a stove install, spending a bit of the money on the biggest log store you have space for is the best economy.

We've just made ours - bought some 6' fence posts and the metal spikes to put into the ground. The sides have been made by breaking up old pallets, the base is also whole pallets. The roof, handily, already made, as we have just dismantled an old 8' x 6' shed that had started to rot. So a really good sized wood store for not too much money.

That sounds good FB. We have a huge conifer in the garden, which is a bit of a pain, but one good thing about it is that we can store our wood under the shelter of the branches. We cover the top of the pile with a tarpaulin to keep really heavy rain off, but that seems to do it. I also keep branches which I've pruned off things in the garden until they're ready to cut up and burn.
Another thing to ponder is what kind of wood you burn. As I understand it, the creme de la creme is Ash. We bought a load of wood once from a local farm which was completely useless. I think it was Horse Chestnut - on its own it just wouldn't burn. We can burn bits of our conifer (Western Red cedar) if it's left for a couple of years after cutting, and mixed with other wood. After our bad experience, we now have a supplier who owns and manages a small piece of woodland, who knows his stuff, and brings the wood cut the right size for our firebox.
And - yes, we had the stove on last night as well!

Thanks for all this -we are reading and learning. We can get logs through the people who supply the stove and have a location in the garden for a log store.

We're looking at the Clearview brochure.

Any suggestions which one we should get?

I really liked the look of the Pioneer stove, but the stove installer said that it wasn't powerful enough for our front room (which is about 23 ft x 15ft) so in the end we went for the Vision flat top.

We have ordered a Clearview Pioneer and it is due to be installed at the end of next week.

- you will not regret it!!

Jaded Green wrote:We have ordered a Clearview Pioneer and it is due to be installed at the end of next week.

Oooh, exciting! Guess you'll be using yours before we use ours. Did a bit more on the flue today - that's nearly finished now. Still got a fair bit of plumbing to do though. And the man has decided to make his own low loss header (its a kind of mixing point for the water heated by the stove, and that heated by the gas boiler). All this fitted around his day job.

Do they expect it to be installed within a day?

They do expect to instal it within a day. We#;; take off the old mantlepiece. 3 pieces of wood and a shelf on brackets! They will start at about 8am abd should be done in time for me to go out at 6pm! We do not need a flue lining.

Then the decorator is coming to decorate, so we should be up and running by the end of the month

Our Riva 40 went in in a day, and it is an inset. They took out the old fireplace, hearth etc, cleared out to the builder's opening, filled the spare space with aerated concrete blocks and a new lintel, fitted liner, stove, slate hearth and slips, and a new oak surround/mantle piece all in time for tea. All I had to do was the topcoat plaster over where the old stuff had fallen off (they did the bonding coat), and fit some new bits of skirting. Oh, and make tea.

Ah well, I guess we're going to be last. We'll have to have a 'you show me yours and I'll show you mine' picture session.

I thought I had posted that the stove went in a couple of weeks ago. Must have been in the Tea Room. We've had a few small burns in there, but were still waiting for some shelves and cupboards to be built, a carpet and curtains, so we're not using the room properly yet.

Now that we have the stove up and running, I thought I would buy Mr JG a wood moisture meter. If we can wait long enough, I'll give it to him for Christmas, but we may need it before then as our wood had got a bit damp although it is inside plastic bags. (We haven't had a chance to sort out storage yet!)

So what do you all recommend? I've looked at aamazon and there seems to be a choise.

I didn't even know you could get such a thing - we just go by touch and length of time it's been knocking around at the bottom of the garden. (May have to look it up on Amazon for Mr D's birthday though!)

Jaded Green wrote:
Now that we have the stove up and running, I thought I would buy Mr JG a wood moisture meter.

I've never used one. Bark falling away, splitting, and weight in the hand (taking into account the type of wood) are what I go by, along with any known history. Looking dry on the outside is a poor indicator; wood that looks dry can be damp inside, and wood that looks wet can be inwardly dry, but recently rained on. For that reason, if you do use a moisture meter you need to split a bit and measure the freshly cut surfaces for an accurate reading.

our wood had got a bit damp although it is inside plastic bags. (We haven't had a chance to sort out storage yet!)

Damp wood inside plastic bags is not good; it will more likely rot than dry. I'd sooner leave it uncovered. Or in a heap. with a sheet of polythene weighted down just over the top. sides open.

Moisture meters - as I said, I don't have one, but on a woodworking forum I sometimes lurk, the strongly recommended types are pricey, and probably over the top for firewood - there was some positive comment about this one from Amazon, which is more affordable.

Cosy in the living room tonight, as we have our new woodburner alight. We've used it a few times now, though the work is far from complete. Rest of the house is C O L D though - the man has been working on the connections between our current CH system and the woodburner stove's boiler. So no other heating tonight (dog won't be very happy come bed time). With luck, though, tomorrow the plumbing will be complete, and some basic electrics that we will have to operate manually until we get the proper controller; then we will at last be able to use the heat from the stove to heat the rest of the house, and give us hot tap water (solar's not doing much this time of year).

That all sounds good, FB.
We've had our woodburner on today too, just to get rid of the feeling of damp in the house with all the rain. I feel sorry for my elderly mother, who had the engineer call to service her hot air system last week, only for him to condemn the unit. He has serviced it for the past five years, and warned that it would need replacing but she had forgotten and was quite shocked. I have to question the person who would leave a frail pensioner who can hardly walk with no heating for a week, but perhaps that's how long it takes to order a new unit. We have rigged her out with a couple of convector heaters, but the episode has really upset her. Hopefully by Wednesday she'll be sorted - thankfully the weather isn't particularly cold at the moment

Dandelion wrote:I have to question the person who would leave a frail pensioner who can hardly walk with no heating for a week, but perhaps that's how long it takes to order a new unit.

He may have had no choice, Dandelion. If the unit had become unsafe, he would not have been able to leave it on for her, even if only for a week. The trouble with warm air units is if the heat exchanger corrodes, then flue gases can get into the air that is being blown around the house - I'm sure you can imagine how potentially dangerous that can be. I would be interested to know on what grounds he has been saying it ought to be replaced for the last few years.

No, I completely understand why he turned it off, but I suppose I would like it to take less time to get hold of a new one!! - living in an ideal world and all that! I don't understand what the problem was - my mother gets quite confused, and doesn't hear well so she couldn't repeat exactly what the engineer had said. She did say that he took the cover off the unit and there was smoke coming out....
The heating system as far as we know hasn't been updated since the house was built 40 years ago, so the unit has done well to last that long.

I was interested by what you said FB about flue gases getting into the air, because I had noticed that my mother was far more vague and sleepy if the heating was on. I had assumed that it was because the heat was too high, but I wonder if she has been breathing in exhaust. I haven't noticed any effects myself while I've been there, but I'm only usually in there for an hour at a time.

Dandelion wrote: She did say that he took the cover off the unit and there was smoke coming out....

It sounds as if the appliance may have failed its spillage or flue tests, both of which require the engineer to use smoke to test. A failure of either is an 'Immediately Dangerous' classification, so the engineer would have had no option but to disconnect the unit from the gas supply.

Dandelion wrote:I was interested by what you said FB about flue gases getting into the air, because I had noticed that my mother was far more vague and sleepy if the heating was on. I had assumed that it was because the heat was too high, but I wonder if she has been breathing in exhaust. I haven't noticed any effects myself while I've been there, but I'm only usually in there for an hour at a time.

That's worrying. If the new unit is also an open-flued appliance* (and it probably will be), I would strongly recommend that you place a Carbon Monoxide alarm ideally in every room - as an absolute minimum, put one in her bedroom and another in the room in which she spends most waking hours, and a third in with the unit. Additionally, it is absolutely essential that it is serviced annually (though it sounds as if the last one was) so that any problems are picked up before they become dangerous.
* An open-flued appliance is one that takes its combustion air from the room that the appliance is in. A wood-burning stove is an open-flued appliance. Because the air to feed the flames comes from the room, if anything blocks the flue, the gases come back the way the air went in. If you're not sure whether the new unit is open-flued, ask the engineer.