Installation cost of wood burning stove in an existing central heating system.

Is the existing boiler a back boiler i.e. in the fireplace?

If it is and the hot water cylinder is immediately above and on a gravity system the cost will not be mega!

Cost of the new stove, a couple of days labour....say £300.00 and a  liner for the flue.....sundry materials pipework and a pump for the heating system plus a timer and that's about it.

May need an air brick or two, in the outside wall, if none present or if not up to spec....

Yes you are right on both counts,im after a straight switch from an oil fired boiler to a wood burner in the same fireplace using the same flue.The cylinder is on the floor above more or less directly over the boiler.I realise burning logs is more labour intensive but thats not a worry.Its time to switch because im getting too mean to pay for oil when theres a limitless supply of logs in the woods next door.
Thanks for the advice.

You're welcome sir....

Actually, you won't need a liner for the flue, if the existing one is ok...

Wouldn't the existing liner be single-skinned though? You should never use one of those for a woodburner - double-skinned ones, with overlapping construction, are essential.

Also, you're going to need a large woodburner to heat a whole series of radiators, so you'd likely need a wider liner anyway. And bear in mind that you'll need the chimney opening to be as high as possible above the apex of the roof to get a decent draw, which means fitting a chimney pot and bird cowl, if they're not already present.

The regulation requiring a non-coverable hole to be drilled in the wall to guarantee ventilation for newly fitted woodburners is an absolute pain. I can see the point of it for people who live in houses which are completely sealed with insulation, with the windows never opened, and all the associated damp problems; but if you live in a healthy, dry house with loads of drafts and a window permanently opened a crack in each room, then the last thing you need is a bloody great hole in the wall with cold, damp air blowing through it. I live in a really old house, where the bricks are basically an 18"-thick pile of rubble, and drilling through that caused so much damage it's a wonder the wall didn't collapse. And that's not taking into account the mould which formed above the vent. I bricked it up again.

The volume of air supplied by the prescribed vent size is no different to that provided by the draft under the door to the room. But because so many OAPs fit those silly draft excluders under every door in the house, the rest of us have to have a pointless, damaging hole drilled in the wall.

More generally, I'm not a great fan of running back boilers off wood burners. The fact is, they remove heat from the firebox, which makes it difficult to get the stove to burn efficiently. The principle of the wood burner is that you get it really, really hot - hot enough to burn the volatiles from the wood using very little air and no smoke, leaving a residue of glowing charcoal to keep the stove (and the room) warm without adding further logs, and long after the flames have disappeared. It's this which makes them such brilliant heaters for a whole house. You circulate the heat through all the rooms and levels by leaving all the doors in the house open (which, of course, also ensures there's plenty of air for the fire), not by removing the heat to pump water through radiators. As I said, in my experience, that just leads to frustration, a weak, smoky fire and a creosoted chimney.

Screaming,thanks for your observations.Having never used a back boiler i had not thought about its potential shortcomings as regards burning less well than a normal log burner because the water is taking the heat away.I get your point.

This suggests a couple of examples of stoves which apparently offer a different way of heating the water, to eliminate the problems I mentioned. No idea of how or whether they work, but there you go:

http://info.cat.org.uk/questions/biomass/back-boiler-traditional-log-stove-good-idea/

Put a bigger circulation pump in ,when log boilers blazing it heats the water much quicker than oil.

1,000

Theres clearly much more to this than i realised.

I heard there was too much pollution from wood burning stoves .....gov. may ban them ?

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https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3025665/woodburners-and-stoves-in-firing-line-for-air-pollution


Households with wood or coal burning stoves could face new restrictions on their fuel use, under a range of measures proposed in a new call for evidence published yesterday by the government.

The government is considering requiring households to switch to low-sulphur coal or dry wood in a bid to cut emissions of harmful particulate matter from domestic stoves. It is also considering tightening sulphur limits for solid fuels, and giving local authorities more power to punish consistent smoke offences.


"Many of us enjoy a cosy fire in our homes, but burning dirtier fuel has a real impact on the quality of air for our family and friends around us," Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said in a statement.

"We must be mindful that pollution is about more than just transport. Poor air quality affects public health, the economy, and the environment, which is why we are determined to do more. However, if we make the switch to burning cleaner domestic fuel, we can continue to enjoy burning wood and smokeless coal in stoves and fires in our homes."

According to the government, the domestic burning of coal and wood is responsible for around 40 per cent of harmful particulate matter emissions, making it the single largest source. Switching from wet wood to dry wood alone could cut particulate emissions from a stove by half, Defra said.

Given that much of the UK is in breach of EU air quality rules, the government is under extreme pressure to bear down on such pollution sources. Earlier this week the European Commission warned the UK will face court action in Europe unless it produces an acceptable new clean air strategy to bring air quality in line with legal requirements.

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/12175306/Is-my-wood-burning-stove-really-killing-me-What-happened-when-I-monitored-my-exposure-to-pollution.html

Wood-burning stoves have been the subject of various hostile medical reports in recent years, but not enough to put off the estimated 200,000 consumers who install them each year, either because they want to save on heating bills or they love it as a manifestation of affluent frugality. There are now 1.2m homes in the UK with one.

Prof Grigg said: “It is true to say that if you burn anything, it will produce little particles of soot. It doesn’t matter if that soot comes from fossil fuel or wood-burning, those particles are going to get deep down into your lung. And this has a potential to cause a harmful effect.”

After an hour of mine burning brightly, the dial settled between 41ug/m³ and 43ug/m³ in my sitting room. This is still within “moderate”, but Prof Grigg said you might want to start worrying if you exposed yourselves to long, sustained periods at this level.

It's because 99 people out of a hundred don't know how to make a fire. I mean, what kind of an idiot even considers trying to burn wet wood? (Answer: every other person I've ever known with a woodburner.)

Smoke is just particles of unburned wood, i.e. wasted fuel.

If the bark isn't peeling, and the fibres aren't perforated, then the log's not seasoned, it's sappy - try setting light to it and you get smoke, not heat.

Even ash, the driest tree going, needs seasoning, which means splitting it in half at the very minimum, and preferably in quarters, and leaving it for a year either exposed to the sun and the wind or in a greenhouse, before drying it thoroughly for a day in the sunshine during summer, and only then stacking it under cover for the winter.

It's not just the fact that unseasoned wood doesn't produce heat, it also tars the flue, the tar becomes immovable creosote, the effective diameter of the flue is reduced, and eventually blocked, leading to a worse draw and even more smoke.

We have lived in several iterations of the same (now big) cottage for over 40 years, and throughout that time have operated oil central heating, augmented more recently by woodburners. We now operate a sealed system driven by an standard oil boiler (not condensing, not combination!!!), with two woodburners operating either side of a big multi-flued chimneystack. NB - we have virtually unlimited access to wood and space to store.

I would say that virtually every comment and piece of advice you have been given by SFBTW matches exactly what we have been told over the years by trusted local companies and we have ended up with a perfect safe system for us.  As SFBTW has demonstrated there is loads of independent advice out there, so beware of those whose advice is heavily coloured by what they are trying to sell you.

Good luck with your task

"The government is considering requiring households to switch to low-sulphur coal or dry wood in a bid to cut emissions of harmful particulate matter from domestic stoves. It is also considering tightening sulphur limits for solid fuels, and giving local authorities more power to punish consistent smoke offences".

Hilarious - I can just see an army of government officials policing the countryside armed with moisure meters checking that everyone's log pile is dry enough. I'd make them a cup of coffee while they checked my piles. I'd even sign a declaration that I would use the oldest pile first.

Actually, if this diverted the use of moisture meters to the use they were designed for, it would be quite good. It might reduce their misuse by building surveyors resulting in vast numbers of erroneous and unnecessary reports of the existence of rising damp in domestic buildings.

Are your kitchen counters low enough blackbarn?

Jomo - I am afraid the sophistication of your post has passed me by.

Ooh er Missus.    Check my piles!

Thanks blackbarn,i think its likely i will stick with oil fired CH and have a separate log burner.