DIY log burner install in garden office - stupid idea?!

[sunflower]

We have a metal clad barn that serves as a garden office, it is insulated and plastered inside. 

 

We currently use electric plug-in oil radiators, they're 2kw. At our current electricity price, 2 heaters will cost us £24/day!

 

For ages we've wanted a log burner so now seems a good time to get one in. We have a decent log supply. My husband is pretty handy with joinery and DIY, but is a log burner installation a step too far?

 

It need'nt be the smartest job in the world, but of course it does need to be safe.

 

Any thoughts/advice on our next steps would be most welcomed

[Canski]

Easy Peasy. Just make sure you install a carbon monoxide detector. 

[TonyT]

Air to air heat pump. I.e aircon?

heat and cool 

[TonyT]

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iqool9plus/electriq-iqool9plus-air-conditioner-air-conditioner

 

 

[Ferdinand]

It's important to think about regulation, and neighbours and pollution, and small soot particles. Log burners are coming into the cross-hairs (imo correctly), especially in urban settings.

 

25 minutes ago, TonyT said:

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iqool9plus/electriq-iqool9plus-air-conditioner-air-conditioner

 

 

 

I have a portable aircon, which is an air conditioner and a heat pump if you plug it in the other way round (CoP about 2.5). This is details, but it is a refurbished version:

 

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/78293300%2f1%2f78082979%2f1%2fairflex15w/electriq-782933001780829791airflex15w--air-conditioner

 

What about a traditional cowboy pot-bellied stove? (You would need a bigger one)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Mountain-10141-Black-Accessories/dp/B000MMWXMY

 

Around here we tend to say look at stoves for boats, which are smaller.

 

Make sure it stands on something fireproof. 

 

[JohnMo]

Or if you want a high efficiency A2A heat pump.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries SRK25ZSX-W/SRC25ZSX-W 2.5kW

[Simplysimon]

if it's going to cost £24 a day to heat an insulated room, then i would suggest a log burner is the only way they are going to achieve the 80deg temp they seem to want.

[JohnMo]

Just reread the £24 or 80kWh per day.

 

Are you sure it's insulated? Or is it really big? and the doors open all day?

 

If you put a log burner in, you would get no work done, you would be forever loading it up with wood.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

Not going to be cheaper to run than alternatives.

 

UK energy crisis sparks rush for firewood despite air pollution fears

People are buying up firewood and installing wood-burning stoves to heat their homes to reduce the impact of the hike in UK energy prices

 

ENVIRONMENT 2 September 2022

By Adam Vaughan

 

Many people in the UK are turning to wood fires for heating to avoid high bills for gas and electricity

Tim Gainey/Alamy

 

UK wood suppliers have reported an unprecedented surge in demand for logs, briquettes and other biomass products as households rush to minimise the impact of energy bills rising 80 per cent next month.

However, experts cautioned that a resurgence in burning wood in stoves, fires and boilers at home could exacerbate air pollution and damage people’s health.

“What we’re seeing is an absolute panic buy, like a covid emptying of the shelves of loo roll and pasta,” says Marc Odin at MJO Forestry, which supplies wood to 15 retailers in the south-east of England.

 

The hidden science of weather and climate change Simon Clark at New Scientist Live this October

In a normal August, he delivers some 55 cubic metres of wood; last month, he delivered about 250 cubic metres. “It is all about the gas price,” he says, referring to Ofgem, the energy regulator for England, Scotland and Wales, last week confirming that the price cap will see a unit of gas rise from 7p to 15p from October.

More than four-fifths of the UK’s homes are heated by gas, while about a tenth also burn wood fuel. This coming winter, fires and stoves that burn wood look likely to be used much more heavily than in recent years as people try to minimise the use of central heating.

“It’s just absolutely unprecedented,” says Rowland Parke at the Wood Fuel Co-operative in Dumfries, UK. He says the group sold as much wood in June and August as it would usually during three months in autumn and winter. Some of the 2000 customers that the co-op serves in the local area have told his team that they are going to turn down the gas and electric and burn as much wood as they can.

 

Bruce Allen, chief executive of HETAS and Woodsure, groups that certify stove installations and quality wood, says “members are also seeing a higher demand for wood fuel with customers stocking up on wood earlier and taking bigger loads to avoid using their central heating as much”. People also seem to be installing more wood-burning appliances than usual at this time of year, says Allen. Visits to the HETAS website were up 60 per cent in August.

 

Read more: Farmers in England will bury burnt wood in fields to capture CO2

 

Allen says it is important that people buy wood with a moisture content of less than 20 per cent, which minimises particulate pollution. “If we are going to see an increase in wood burning as an alternative, then we want to ensure that it’s being done in the most environmentally responsible way to safeguard the air we all breathe,” he says.

Mark Lebus at the UK Pellet Council, which is a trade body, says: “We are seeing considerable uptick in new wood burning stoves and small domestic biomass boilers as the price of wood pellets remains very competitive with gas, oil and especially electricity.”

Other companies supplying biomass for homes report a dramatic bump in custom. “Demand for firewood is huge with customers wanting to have an alternative heating source and fuel paid for ahead of winter,” says one industry figure, who didn’t want to be named.

A spokesperson for Big K, which supplies supermarkets including Ocado, says the company is seeing “earlier than normal trends”, in particular for bulk wood sold in big bags. “We are aware of smaller processors facing a significant uplift  in demand compared to the last few years,” they add.

Janis Reinsons at Lekto Woodfuels in the UK, which sources wood from Latvia, says the company “has been experiencing historically high demand this summer”. The firm sold more wood fuel in August than its usual peak month of December. Reinsons says he is aware of competitors routinely running out stock.

“It is impossible to tell whether or not the wood fuel industry will be able to satisfy the demand for wood fuels during the peak heating season,” he says. Odin says that two of the biggest retailers he supplies expect to run out of wood by December, if the current high demand continues.

 

Read more: Health impacts of wood burning cost EU and UK €13 billion a year

 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the main reason for rising gas prices, also seems to be shifting the provenance of wood burned in UK homes. Parke says one major German supplier has hiked prices of beech exports to preserve the fuel for domestic use. Wood fuel imports from Russia and Belarus to the UK have also been halted since the war began, says Mark Sommerfeld at the Wood Heat Association, another trade body. The UK government last month also proposed suspending rules on the quality of wood pellets due to disrupted supplies since the invasion.

Growth in the number of wood-burning stoves in recent years has seen a 35 per cent increase in air pollution particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, known as PM2.5, from domestic wood burning between 2010 and 2020. That has led to calls for a ban on sales of stoves in some quarters. Yet today’s high gas prices look set to boost wood burning, and air pollution in the process.

Gary Fuller at Imperial College London says: “It is important that vulnerable people are helped to keep warm this winter, but extra wood burning is not the answer. It will worsen the existing air pollution problems in our cities, towns and even across the countryside in the UK and Europe.” He says people also need to think about where wood is sourced from, because felling more trees will see woodlands release more carbon and could harm wildlife habitats.

[Kelvin]

I’m going to have a similar challenge to address. My garage is going to be 10mx6m insulated steel building (40mm walls and roof) with an insulated floor.
 

I’ll initially use it as storage and site office. My plan is to partition one end of it and build another insulated room inside it. It’s likely to be too warm in the summer and too cold in the winter so I intend to fit a multi head split A2A heat pump. 

[ProDave]

I fitted a WBS in out static caravan and it heated that for almost no cost through a cold winter.