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UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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#1
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
I am looking for an efficient woodburning stove for my lounge. I have
come across industrial looking wood burning boilers that gasify the wood in a top chamber with the flames created underneath in a second chamber. Is anybody aware of a high-tech design of cosmetically acceptable wood stove that perhaps burns the wood in such a way as to increase efficiency and reduce waste product? Ideally I would like it to be thermostatically controlled. |
#2
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Top of the range stoves (rather than woodburners) are Jotul and Morso.
Jotul claim that their stoves are able to burn methanes in the flue gas particularly efficently - and that the effect is to release less greenhouse gases than if the wood was left to rot. A friend showed me a scheme the French governent was running to subsidise this type of stove because of it's green credentials. There is one brand of stoves from the US that uses a catalyst (can't remember the name), but more than one person has told me they're problematic. I've got a Jotul F600 and recommend it - though with hindsight I would have paid a little extra for the enamel finish. |
#3
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my
fireplace http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of information on wood burner efficiencies: http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm Plus pellet burners, they work like this: http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice! I have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself. If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner. The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works but their site is here fopr interest: http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp |
#4
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Tim wrote: Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my fireplace http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of information on wood burner efficiencies: http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm Plus pellet burners, they work like this: http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice! I have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself. If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner. The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works but their site is here fopr interest: http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp hi Tim, I am a great advocate of the wood burning stove and have one in my living room. A few points to observe. Forget about thermostats etc. Its impossible to be so precise as the heat output is dictated entirely by the amount of wood and the quality of the wood you burn. Obviously well seasoned timber will burn better than fresh timber which will leave much more ash behind. Ash logs will burn quicker than most others etc etc. Apple trees will give off a lovely aroma. Alder wood is almost impossible to burn. Oak is difficult also. You may have lots of dead elms which are great firewood. So you cant control these with instruments eventhough some will bull**** you that they can. If you mix the different types of wood they will burn much better. Also once you get a fire going, put a big log on and it will burn for many hours. At bedtime select a large log and close the doors and damper and in the morning you will come down to a warm room and a small fire still going on the bed of hot ash. Naturally it all depends on the weather how much heat you want and how large your room is. It is also dictated by how much you close the doors and open or close the damper. To start a fire, leave one door open a little and this produces a great draught to get it started. Once the fire gets going leave both doors open fully and its like sitting at an open fire. If it smokes, close one or both doors enough to cure it. We clean out the ashes about every three or four weeks. Burn the fire on the floor of the stove on a bed of ash rather than on a metal grid. The most important thing to realise about that stove you showed in the pic is that it is free standing and not set into a fireplace. That maximises the heat output in the room. If you set it into the fireplace, you will lose a great deal of heat straight up the chimney. Put a sheet of metal in front of the opening, just set back from the edge and make a hole in the tin to run the flue horizontally into that sheet, thereby ensuring your burner is actually sitting in the room rather than in the fireplace. This keeps all the heat in the room. There is a metal plate in mine just in front of the flue and this deflects the heat outwards and the fumes drift over it to the flue. Best buy I ever made. It made my home livable because before that during the winter I had to retire to a smaller room because of the cold. Every home should have a wood burning stove, especially if you have a really large room. Its clean, its natural, its green, its cheap, its independant of oil or gas which may someday be turned off and its basically a brick lined metal box with two doors and a hole for the flue. the one you show is probably expensive because it is elaborate in design. |
#5
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#6
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Huge wrote: On 2006-08-14, wrote: Oak is difficult also. Hmm. This rather casts doubt on the remainder of your posting, since I have burned little else for the last couple of years. -- "Other people are not your property." [email me at huge [at] huge [dot] org [dot] uk] Since you have experienced little else only oak, then you would not be in a position to cast doubt, would you? Do you use a wood burning stove? |
#7
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#8
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Guy King wrote: While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals, compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Some American states are likely to bring in pollution laws specifically to control wood burners. They chuck out huge amounts of pollution, are hugely inefficient and there's been a big increase in their use because of oil price rises. Lots of people have them , but formerly relied on oil when they realised the amount of work involved in feeding them. Bookmarked this recently; http://www.fbcgroup.co.uk/ |
#9
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out
quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals, compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice. http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm Can I burn wood in a smokeless zone? Wood can be burned in a smokeless zone if the appliance (i.e. the stove or boiler) has an Exemption Certificate. Companies which manufacture stoves with Exemption Certificates include Clearview, Vermont Castings, Dovre, Dunsley Yorkshire Stoves, Morso and Jotul. A full list can be found at http://www.uksmokecontrolareas.co.uk....php?country=e. |
#10
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Aidan wrote: Some American states are likely to bring in pollution laws specifically to control wood burners. They chuck out huge amounts of pollution, are hugely inefficient and there's been a big increase in their use because of oil price rises. Lots of people have them , but formerly relied on oil when they realised the amount of work involved in feeding them. wood burning is the most natural fuel on the planet. In a wood burning stove, the fire is controlled so that it doesnt burn up too quickly. You say they chuck out huge amounts of pollution. Care to explain the pollutants? Surely oil fumes are a much greater pollutant. Actually to illustrate that, I once started a small petrol engine generator inside a house forgetting to site it outside the door and went upstairs for a few minutes. To my horror the house filled up in minutes with terrible fumes and that brought home to me the terrible pollution of millions of cars that pollute the heavens every minute of every day all over the planet. It was some time before the house was clear of the choking smell from the three or four minutes of that small engine. Is it any wonder then that the atmosphere is so polluted? You say also that they are ineffieient. That perhaps is because they are stuck in someones chimney place rather than outside it and perhaps the users dont know how to control them, which takes a little thought, and once mastered leaves life with a wood burning stove very comfortable indeed. Dont knock it if you havent experienced one. I wouldnt trade it for all the oil in Arabia. As for feeding them, dont you have to feed every fire? Close the doors and they last for hours while an open fire would be dying in half an hour. |
#11
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Tim wrote:
Thanks for those leads. This was the one I would choose to fit my fireplace http://www.jotul.us/content/products...e____3098.aspx It also led me to the Log Pile site which had quite a lot of information on wood burner efficiencies: http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/faqs.htm Plus pellet burners, they work like this: http://www.buildingforafuture.co.uk/...ets_page_2.php Particularly interesting was that they can be automated, which is what I want. They claim to work at optimal burn efficiency and that the the ash tray requires emptying only once a month. That is very nice! It's also ********..to generate any sort of heat is about a cubic meter of ash a month, in my experience. I have an abundance of wood but I would want to make the pellets myself. If that isn't possible I guess I should go for a standard log burner. Not a lot wrong with that - we use a couple of open fires and a 'highwayman' stove here..only one open fire is used consistently though. The highwayman is definitely less draught inducing and more efficient than the open fire..we have it in our bedroom for days when we have the 'flu...its brilliant. A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up to about 2-3. Our huge open fire is about 10KW, but a lot goes up the chimney..it takes ages to warm the room as mostly the first three hours its warming the brickwork around it. However it keeps the room hot all night afterwards. We tend to light it about 2pm in the winter, so that by 5pm its really well set up. It dies around 11pm which is a couple of hours before we hit the sack. The other high tech approach was using gasification of the wood, where the flames burn underneath the logs. Can't quite fgure how that works but their site is here fopr interest: http://www.woodboilers.com/wood-gasification.asp |
#13
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Guy King wrote:
The message . com from contains these words: Its clean, its natural, its green, its cheap, While woodstoves are many things, clean isn't one of them. They put out quite a bit of pollution, including some really narsty chemicals, compared to a gas fire. That said, they're still rather nice. Yes, but they don't put out CO2 that hasn't already been taken out of the air..recently. Otherwise, I totally agree. However I LIKE the smell. |
#14
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#15
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Steve Firth wrote:
On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote: Alder wood is almost impossible to burn. Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the occult (allegedly), it does however burn well. Must try some. We could do with a few local spirits to liven up the dull winters. Oak is difficult also. Bull****. Both burn well if dry. Never burn MDF if you can help it though..never mind te occult..it stinks and is probably laced with a cocktail of chemicals that Saddam Hussein would have wet dreams over. |
#16
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words: Yes, but they don't put out CO2 that hasn't already been taken out of the air..recently. Oh, I'm not knocking that bit, but there's a good deal of misunderstanding about how clean they are. Some modern stoves are very good at burning the flue gases but older/simpler stoves pour out hydrocarbons and things like... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract The stoves which are best at reducing this are those with the tightest control over airflow etc - so no more doors open while burning and the like. The content of the flue gas varies enormously with what the stove's doing. Burning fiercly will produce very different outputs to smouldering overnight, for example. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#18
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Steve Firth wrote:
On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote: Alder wood is almost impossible to burn. Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the occult (allegedly), it does however burn well. It could be that there is a confusion between Elder and Alder, totally different trees. Elder (usually only a small bush, biggest logs you'll get are only three or four inches diameter) really doesn't burn very well. Oak is difficult also. Bull****. It needs a good hot fire to burn well but that's all. -- Chris Green |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#20
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
The Natural Philosopher wrote: It's also ********..to generate any sort of heat is about a cubic meter of ash a month, in my experience. There is something seriously flawed with your stove or more likely the way you use it. Mine has a plastic shopping bag full of ash which will have become almost rigid and that is about once a month with a fire on day and night. Perhaps you are burning fresh timber or more likely you have a grate. Its best to burn the fire on the floor of the stove with no grate. That way you always have a hot bed of ash under it. A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up to about 2-3. Our huge open fire is about 10KW, but a lot goes up the chimney..it takes ages to warm the room as mostly the first three hours its warming the brickwork around it. However it keeps the room hot all night afterwards. We tend to light it about 2pm in the winter, so that by 5pm its really well set up. It dies around 11pm which is a couple of hours before we hit the sack. you use the traditional fireplace for your living room so perhaps you should not talk so knowledgably about wood burning stoves when you clearly have limited experience of them. That scenario would be much improved if you installed a wood burning stove in your living room. You could get 10 kw and lose very little up the chimney if you did what I said earlier. You would probably burn much less timber in the stove and get far better heat output and therefore put less of those pollutants you refer to into the atmosphere. You dont know what you are missing. |
#21
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Guy King wrote: Wood smoke contains an amazing array of chemicals, many of them extremely nasty. It's one of the reasons people smoke food to preserve it, the bugs are killed by the heat but are prevented from reinfecting by the toxins on the surface. Perhaps I'm very green but what could be more natural than a wood fire? Just because you see a plume of smoke coming off it is not evidence of pollution. The oil burners where you cant see a plume of smoke may contain much more toxic chemicals that are invisible. I am not a scientist but you cant go too far wrong if you stick to the natural way. I would guess that the smoke from coal is much more toxic than a wood fire. |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#23
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote: A good wood burner kicks out an easy kilowatt, and can be persuaded up to about 2-3. Our good woodburner kicks out about 8KW according to the specs. It's Stovax unit, and although it's relatively new to us (and therefore we haven't use it that much - it's still summertime in Devon ;-) when we have run it up, we've been more than impressed with it. http://www.stovax.com/products.htm?cid=4&sid=9&pid=216 Gordon |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#26
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
wrote:
Steve Firth wrote: On 14 Aug 2006 13:24:13 -0700, wrote: Alder wood is almost impossible to burn. Umm not so, the phobia about burnign alder wood is that it attracts the occult (allegedly), it does however burn well. It could be that there is a confusion between Elder and Alder, totally different trees. Elder (usually only a small bush, biggest logs you'll get are only three or four inches diameter) really doesn't burn very well. Indeed. I so burn it, but mostly its really crap. Oak is difficult also. Bull****. It needs a good hot fire to burn well but that's all. Its one of the best for stoves. # |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#30
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
On 15 Aug 2006 01:21:23 -0700, "Aidan" wrote:
Surely oil fumes are a much greater pollutant. Yes. But you would have difficulty in finding a smoke plume from even one oil or gas boiler in your neighbourhood. Most wood/coal fire can usually be smelt or seen. Certainly when pubs and restaurants have log fires you can usually smell the fire well away from the building in the car park. Prolonged exposure to wood smoke can cause eyes to become sensitised to it. If a large percentage of households suddenly start lighting wood burners, that they hadn't used in years, then you may have a problem. They'd all have a problem with the Council if they tried it round here. Actually to illustrate that, I once started a small petrol engine generator inside a house forgetting to site it outside the door and went upstairs for a few minutes. To my horror the house filled up in minutes with terrible fumes and Of course it did. If you'd lit a small wood fire in the middle of your kitchen, that would have filled the house with smoke and fumes as well. OTOH, I've seen a small generator set running on LPG used to power a christmas side show on an internal balcony in Marshall Field's Dept. Store in Chicago. It was almost 100% silent and discharged it's exhaust straight to the atmosphere in the room. It was undetectable DG |
#31
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:48:41 +0100, Derek Geldard
wrote: If a large percentage of households suddenly start lighting wood burners, that they hadn't used in years, then you may have a problem. They'd all have a problem with the Council if they tried it round here. OOPS... Sorry to follow up to my own post. Just to say I had in mind open wood fires, whereas the thread was about Wood burning stoves, although the bit I replied to described them as "wood burners". DG |
#32
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
On 15 Aug 2006 11:09:11 GMT, Huge wrote:
"Natural" does not necessarily mean "good for you". Do you want a nice refreshing glass of this natural Nux vomica extract? Actually, I've just discovered that it is one of the most commonly prescribed homeopathic remedies. Good job that they don't understand dilution, isn't it? |
#33
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#34
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
wrote:
wrote: Perhaps I'm very green but what could be more natural than a wood fire? Volcanoes, and you'd surely agree that they are both "natural" and highly polluting I am not a scientist but you cant go too far wrong if you stick to the natural way. Fecking ignorant hippy. Mother Nature is a vicious old cow and she spends her time trying to kill us. "Natural" does in no possible way imply "healthy", no more than henbane and hogweed. What is more natural than an atom bomb? made from 100% natural materials. By mother nature's natural creatures. |
#35
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
The Natural Philosopher wrote: What is more natural than an atom bomb? made from 100% natural materials. By mother nature's natural creatures. and to think that I thought you were not a philosopher. I take it all back. but we must live on planet earth in the meantime and natural has always been a pretty good guideline. the scientific gurus pretend to know all the answers and yet they are always found wanting in the end. they still cant cure the common cold so my wood burning stove will remain my pride and joy to keep me warm in winter. Its efficient, cheap to run, clean it out once a month, it looks fine, and what more can a person ask for? |
#36
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words: What is more natural than an atom bomb? made from 100% natural materials. Waste of almost a whole party baloon full of helium, though. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#38
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
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#39
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
The Natural Philosopher wrote: What is more natural than an atom bomb? Only if it's made with FairTrade yellowcake. |
#40
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Wood burning stoves - what is the state of the art?
Top of the range stoves (rather than woodburners) are Jotul and Morso.
I have looked at those ranges. Does anybody else have any other suggestions forparticularly efficient woodburning stoves that I should be exploring? |
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