I've been looking at woodburners for ages as I have unlimited wood, and a big fireplace. But 20% effeciency from the fire compared to 70+% from woodburner efficiency seems daft to me, and heating oil is wild expensive. Wondering if anyone has a stove with a tertiary air inlet - i.e. it takes it's air for burning from outside, rather than from in the room. Just a core drill through the back of the chimney, from what I gather, then the usual outside gubbins. The advantage being, normally a stove will suck air from your room, which in turn sucks air from the rest of the house, which in turn makes it into your heated room. So you are actually sucking in cold air into the room through the house, to burn the wood - whereas a tertiary air stove sucks it from outside, so not cooling the house or room. Just wondering, as I intend to buy once, install it properly, and spend a fair bit on it.
Intresting theory! Do you mean the draw of the fire sucking the air or some kind of forced induction into the fire to keep it going?
TSC, the amount of air drawn in through the stove compared to an open fire is tiny. A roaring open fire will just about suck the shirt off your back with the draw! However a stove has such a small and controlled air inlet that is negligible. My old Morso Panther 8kw had an orifice about 35mm diameter.
A fire needs air, yeah? So why suck cold air through the rest of the house, when you can draw it straight from outside through a tertiary inlet?
Yes. Been there, done that. two 75mm bore pipes are needed ideally. They are to be under the floor(If you want it looking nice) and at 90 degrees to each other. As in, exiting at two different outside walls originating from near the ash pit/fire/stove base. Use metal or ceramic/clay for the last 900mm approaching fire. No more windows left on the ventilate position, or moving doors, or draughts by your feet, or, or or.....
I have one,heat is not the problem,it getting it out of the living room thats the real problem (gets too hot,rest of the house is cold) lie on the floor and its colder as heat rises,i just need it to go the upstairs! Fix that,then your on a winner!
Been there did that too Fit some short bits of sewerage pipes flush in the ceiling upto the upstairs rooms. You can even include an inline carbon cannister if you want to exclude kitchen smells. Me being me, and wanting to make everything, made the canisters too, collected some purge carbon canisters from a few new crashed cars and made inline filters. You could buy the granules and indeed Im sure the inline filters themselves, but I...... Works real good. Surprising actually.
I suggest that you put the burner outside, and pipe the flue directly into your room, you'll get the best heating effect then.
mine's still not operation, but i have 2 airbricks with sliding grills behind it in the outside wall. no idea if it'll work, but it makes sense in my head
Yep to what Dan said, very little draught required/created. Considered an outside-air feed when ours was going in, but was persuaded by the installer that it wouldn't be worth it. Yep to what turbotommy said, heating effect is a bit localised. Ours is right up one end of the house, the opposite end to the staircase. Like Brian's piping the warm air through the ceiling idea, I considered the same but my missus wouldn't let me try it "What? You mean have big holes in the ceiling and in the floor upstairs!? " quoth she.
So you'd be heating air from the graveyard rather from inside the house? Doesn't make anymore sense than heating air in the house surely?
We want to do the woodburning stove thing in our new house (if we get it!). Theres no fireplace though, i presume the flue can go through the wall rather than up a chimney? And if we're drilling walls anyway to get the flue out then maybe we'll do this inlet idea too, if it's deemed more efficient.
Thats what i was thinking. Might route a little maze around the house to get as much heat dissipation as possible inside
The trouble with that idea is that the flue ideally should be as hot as possible internally, and reasonably short, end-to-end. Otherwise you'll get condensation of water and creosote on the coolest parts; that will then attract particulates/soot, and clog up the whole thing rather swiftly. It will also be harder to sweep, the more maze-like it is.
Correct, but by the sounds of it the same issue would apply if there was a high level flue exit (ie just below ceiling height?).
It does - think about it, the fire needs air. It can either suck it through gaps in doors, windows, floorboards etc, and drag it over to the stove, cooling the rest of the house down and causing draughts - or it can just suck it straight from the outside via a wee hole in the wall and a pipe, so the rest of the house never sees the cold air...
The stoves I'm looking at have high output back boilers, which can run multiple radiators as well as heat the room it's it - so use my existing central heating network to sort that out! I only really heat the living room, the bedroom and the bathroom, so it shouldn't be an issue.
