Log burner

[PeterW]

If you’re in Humberside or that neck of the woods @epsilonGreedy then give LPG Direct a call. They do underground LPG tanks and will beat the usual suspects hands down on price and service usually. 

[joe90]

No mate but close, sparky is here working hard and I am laying flooring. I recon another two months till we can move in.

[JamesP]

  On 21/02/2018 at 12:12, joe90 said:

Well I have built a well insulated, airtight ( I hope) newbuild with a small wood burner that has a dedicated under slab air feed pipe. Yes it may get a bit warm for me but never too warm for SWMBO?

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Hey Joe,  WBS (small one) has been requested in our airtight new build and just wondering what type of pipe and diameter for air feed supply (is it compulsory)  before I put down 150mm celotex, ufh and screed on ground floor. 

[PeterW]

  On 21/02/2018 at 13:45, JamesP said:

Hey Joe,  WBS (small one) has been requested in our airtight new build and just wondering what type of pipe and diameter for air feed supply (is it compulsory)  before I put down 150mm celotex, ufh and screed on ground floor. 

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63mm up to 5kw stove output from the regs IIRC

 

Which happens to be ordinary down pipe size 

[epsilonGreedy]

  On 21/02/2018 at 12:09, HerbJ said:

I believe "Denby Dale passive house" or " Golcar passive house"  are houses   constructed by the Green Building Store - https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/. Their website is very informative and includes blogs on these builds

 

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Much appreciated, I had not encountered that site. Pleased to read that brick and block self builders can join the passive pursuit.

[epsilonGreedy]

  On 21/02/2018 at 12:45, PeterW said:

If you’re in Humberside or that neck of the woods @epsilonGreedy then give LPG Direct a call. They do underground LPG tanks and will beat the usual suspects hands down on price and service usually. 

 

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I followed this up, prices are not frightening though I might struggle to meet the 3m safe distance tank rule. Is 34p per litre competitive?

[PeterW]

Tank can be anywhere on the plot - back garden ..?? As long as the supply pipe is buried correctly and the wagon driver can see both tank and vehicle then it’s fine. 

[JamesP]

@epsilonGreedy Heating LPG is usually half the price  of forecourt vehicle which used to be half the price of unleaded. I had a 5L V8 station wagon which was converted to lpg which also fitted an 8x4 sheet flat in the back. @Ferdinand  .

[Gone West]

  On 21/02/2018 at 10:01, Cpd said:

Finding the “right” small stove will be the challenge......

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When we moved into our current bungalow there was a very small wbs fitted. Someone said it was from a gypsy caravan, it was no more than 400mm high, we sold it for £50.

Edited February 21, 2018 by PeterStarck

[Jeremy Harris]

  On 21/02/2018 at 10:01, Cpd said:

 Finding the “right” small stove will be the challenge.....

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If you're determined enough to fit one, then have a look at narrowboat stoves.  There are some pretty small ones made for that market.  Far from clean burning, I suspect, as their flue output often looks pretty nasty whenever I've seen one operating.

[ProDave]

For low power stoves, look at the Springdale 3KW stove available with ducted air intake kit http://www.stovesareus.co.uk/burley-springdale-wood-burning-stove.html

 

This is almost certainly what we will fit.

 

I wired a straw bale house a few years back. They found a stove for that that claimed to put 10KW to water and only 2KW to the room.  It was installed in a big double height living room and heated a massive (I believe 2000L or something like that) thermal store. The thermal store provided DHW and UFH.

 

The theory is you only need to light the stove every few days to top up the thermal store.

 

 

[gravelld]

Are the efficiency ratings realistic? Gut feel is that a LOT more than 10-15ish % of the energy goes up the flue.

[ProDave]

We currently use a 4KW stove, so probably 600W goes up the flue. I have no reason to believe it is significantly more than that.

[Lesgrandepotato]

  On 21/02/2018 at 16:55, gravelld said:

Are the efficiency ratings realistic? Gut feel is that a LOT more than 10-15ish % of the energy goes up the flue.

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Don’t know how legit they are, but they are massively more efficient than the open fire for heat. We are using about 1/4 the amount of logs in a room twice the size in the evening. Normally only 4-6 logs a night now. 

[gravelld]

  On 21/02/2018 at 16:56, Lesgrandepotato said:

Don’t know how legit they are, but they are massively more efficient than the open fire for heat. We are using about 1/4 the amount of logs in a room twice the size in the evening. Normally only 4-6 logs a night now. 

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Right, but that's because the burn is more efficient for a number of reasons, I get that.

 

I'm just sceptical that the result of the burn doesn't just go up the chimney.

 

I'm probably discounting the effect of radiated heat and conduction through the metal, but it would be good to understand the science a bit.

 

And do all stoves have the heat exchanger mentioned for the Springvale? Mine doesn't - I take the top fire bricks up and there's just the flue. And yet it claims 75% efficiency!

[Mr Punter]

  On 21/02/2018 at 09:45, epsilonGreedy said:

I cannot find public domain info covering airtight techniques for conventional brick & block designs.

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Have a look at http://tonyshouse.readinguk.org

 

He achieved results of less than 1.0 with a brick and block construction.

[JOE187]

I put a small 5kw burner in my own house  and used 100mm air supply  duct in floor with adjustable stainless  grill and a bung  to completely seal when not needed as photo below.

I do have MHVR and a supply and extract approx  6m apart in this room.

The fire burns really well with grill open and air supply is silent when Bung is in place!

 

[Simplysimon]

small estate of passive houses built with woodburners  https://www.dormontestate.com/dormont-park/design-and-construction/

incidentally visited the ccg manufacturing site last week, very interesting, however, i was disappointed to see the low level of insulation they were constructing their kits to. the very good point is that 10% of the workforce are apprentices.

 

edit ccg info.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Simplysimon

[SteamyTea]

  On 21/02/2018 at 09:34, Cpd said:

Imagine if you were an ipad user with a wood burning stove and a dirty landrover...... devil incarnate..... 

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You will have no cash left to do anything worthwhile.

[Nickfromwales]

 

  On 21/02/2018 at 12:17, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Not quite 

 

The starting point is no mains gas, a garden that will not accommodate a regular LPG tank and a dislike of oil heating having lived with it for 4 winters. Cooking via LPG.

 

From a social perspective the happiest occasions in the last few years have been centered around an open fire with for example the grand daughter staying overnight and playing with her dolls house.

 

My current tentative heating design will be based on a 250 l thermal store connected to economy 7, a wood burning stove/boiler and an lpg gas boiler for urgent top up. On a typical working day a brief 6 am central heating blast should bump the house temperature up to a tolerable 18 degrees. At 4 pm the residual thermal store heat should be enough to warm the house then at say 7pm we can elect to fire up the woodburner stove or rely on LPG heating top up if it is a mild day.

 

My concern is heat regulation on those freezing deep winter weekends. If OH gets carried away with stoking the stove then after a long burn the stove's boiler water circuit might struggle to shed heat. I hope that with sufficient water volume the system will not be too thermally spikey. My current guess for total water volume is 200 + 70 (rads) + 25 (pipes), that should soak up a lot of heat and then there are those sash windows.  

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Ok, sounds too small at 250l to me. What is the size of the house and number of occupants / bathrooms etc ? If your having an LPG boiler id make it a combi. If your not using space heating or the woodburner for a good 5 / 6 months of the year then why heat a big TS just to get some DHW? Horribly inefficient and quite crude imo. Use it for DHW preheat to the combi instead, if you haven't got 3 or more bathrooms. If your having solar PV then not so bad as it'll have some of the losses offset and provide a lot of the DHW too.

Go sealed and pressurised, and lag all the pipework to death. Make sure all the heating circuits have 2-port motorised zone valves on them to stop convection heat flow when the heating isn't being used.  

[joe90]

  On 21/02/2018 at 13:45, JamesP said:

Hey Joe,  WBS (small one) has been requested in our airtight new build and just wondering what type of pipe and diameter for air feed supply (is it compulsory)  before I put down 150mm celotex, ufh and screed on ground floor. 

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Hi James, sorry for the late reply. I used a 110mm drainage pipe under the floor within the celotex layer ( on a slight slope out of the house) and had a box fabricated from steel to bring it up and onto the back of the stove.  On another note the stove supplier suggested that I bring the air intake pipe up to 600mm above ground level, a bit like a short soil stack with a cover to stop rain driving down into it, I also drilled a small hole in the 90, bend at the bottom to drain any condensation from within the pipe.

[Moira Niedzwiecka]

We were looking at installing a wbs but our architect advised against it because of overheating & disruption to the airtight envelope.

We did allow for the direct air feed in the foundation but have now blocked it off.

We also didn't fancy making a big hole in our closed panel roof for the flue.

I also don't think we had appreciated how potentially polluting they are.

We decided it would be a very expensive & quite messy white elephant in the corner of the room that would only be used very occasionally & we could spend the money better elsewhere.

I do understand the attraction though.

We currently have a cast iron oil burning stove that looks just like a wbs.

Great bit of kit. We installed it 20years ago. Cheap to run, heats all the hot water when lit during winter months, no mess & as it is a pot burner we get a constant temperature.

 

[JamesP]

  On 22/02/2018 at 09:47, joe90 said:

 

Hi James, sorry for the late reply. I used a 110mm drainage pipe under the floor within the celotex layer ( on a slight slope out of the house) and had a box fabricated from steel to bring it up and onto the back of the stove.  On another note the stove supplier suggested that I bring the air intake pipe up to 600mm above ground level, a bit like a short soil stack with a cover to stop rain driving down into it, I also drilled a small hole in the 90, bend at the bottom to drain any condensation from within the pipe.

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I will put in the air supply pipe but hopefully will just cap it off. Depends on the other half of this partnership.

 

  On 22/02/2018 at 10:58, Moira Niedzwiecka said:

We were looking at installing a wbs but our architect advised against it because of overheating & disruption to the airtight envelope.

We did allow for the direct air feed in the foundation but have now blocked it off.

We also didn't fancy making a big hole in our closed panel roof for the flue.

I also don't think we had appreciated how potentially polluting they are.

We decided it would be a very expensive & quite messy white elephant in the corner of the room that would only be used very occasionally & we could spend the money better elsewhere.

I do understand the attraction though.

We currently have a cast iron oil burning stove that looks just like a wbs.

Great bit of kit. We installed it 20years ago. Cheap to run, heats all the hot water when lit during winter months, no mess & as it is a pot burner we get a constant temperature.

 

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I hear you about the particle matter issue, its a huge problem which has largely been ignored.

http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2757/rr-1

[Bitpipe]

There was a rather sobering item on BBC last week about the rise in incidence of non smoking lung cancer. Air pollution is suspected to be one contributor, but as a disease it gets much less research than others as lung cancer is still seen as essentially self inflicted.

 

I would not be surprised if in years to come, as smoking rates continue to decline but lung cancer remains prevalent, focus will switch to even tighter controls of pollution to accompany the drive to reduce car emissions etc.

 

Question is therefore whether investing in a WBS now is a good longer term move? Could end up being an expensive ornament.

 

 

[Moira Niedzwiecka]

There are several of our neighbours who have wbs.

I know when I wipe down our exterior paintwork it is covering in black spots that are hard like little bits of clinker.

We live in dip at the bottom of a hill & when the wind blows down the hill it can get quite smokey outside & in.

The seeps in through the xpelair in the bathroom especially.