Whats the best combination of heating for a home, in your experience?
My other half and I are looking at adding some self sufficiency to the house, I was thinking of a wood burner running into the radiator system (is that even possible?) and also a solar water-heater supplying the hot water tank. Doing it that was round, I think, means that in cold weather the house is warm and there is hot water stored up from whenever the sun shines.
Any thoughts or experiences of doing similar would be much appreciated.
We're looking into the wood burner option later next year and are planning to add it to the water heating system. Those wood burners cost a little more but are fairly simple to plumb in... for a plumber anyway. We have a combi boiler and have been advised there would be no real problems. The main thing we were concerned with was whether we lived in a smoke controlled zone or not. Thankfully we don't although that doesn't preclude neighbours from being able to complain so we'll use smokeless when it's set up.
Just looking at the last quote on this, while it's possible to connect and use a water heater version we'll not be using that... It's too expensive for us!
I know Raeburn and Aga Stoves have been used for Hot Water and Radiators.
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Yeah, most log burners have a water coil around the flue.
I want to think it is as simple as adding said coil as if it were another radiator, then running the circulation pump with the boiler off and pulling the heat back round the system.
A fellow prepper i know has a stupidly simple method of heating the house he is renovating ......
directly above the chimney breast where he has the multi fuel burner he has cut a hole in the ceiling / floor and boxed it between the joists in to save heating the floor void and fitted a strong metal grill so you dont fall down the hole...
you should feel the heat rising to warm the upstairs!
stupidly simple no chance of a pump failing
If your roughing it, Your doing it wrong
Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine
We have a Rayburn. It's great as it warms an otherwise very cold room and also heats water and radiators.
The downside is that they are VERY expensive to buy and install, and they also require a VAST supply of wood/solid fuel. You also need a back up for summer months when it's not alight!
We have a wood burning range cooker which heats radiators, as well as wood-burning stove in the living room.
Between them they can do a pretty good job of heating the house in winter.
A few things to consider though :
- You need to burn properly seasoned firewood. This means it needs to have been stored in a dry place for at least a year - and ideally more.
- You can buy seasoned logs - but they are expensive. A better option (and one that could work if TSHTF) is to harvest logs from nearby trees (there will be tons going spare after the recent storm for instance).
- But they need to be stored to season - so you need to be able to store a lot of logs (enough to last you a year or two). This takes up a lot of space (wood has much lower energy density than say coal or oil - you need lots of logs to get through a winter).
- Wood-burning isn't such a good option if you live near to lot of neighbors. The smoke can be a nuisance - and causes a lot of disputes.
- The wood burning appliances need no electricity - so will work fine without power. The flow of hot water between the appliance and the tank typically doesn't need a pump so that should work too. However the radiators will only get the hot water if a pump is active - so that won't work without power.
- If you are going to harvest you own logs - you need equipment to do this. Ideally a chainsaw, and diesel powered log splitter. In theory in a TSHTF scenario you could do it with a hand saw and an axe - but don't underestimate the amount of heavy labor this would involve - probably several hours a day of hard work to keep a house warm in winter.
However I don't want to put anyone off wood-burning. I think it works really well now - and if things go bad its the only way you will likely have fuel beyond the short term.
I'd like to add to what's been said. We have a wood burner in one room of the house, 5Kw, which heats up the one room pretty quickly, and if you leave the doors open, eventually the heat permeates the whole house. It was about £1500 installed, and when a bed of ash has formed, ony uses about 4 logs per hour to keep good and hot. We have also splashed out on a wood-burning range cooker, with integrated boiler. It's 22Kw of which 18Kw goes into the boiler. This provides all my hot water, central heating and cooking every day. It uses a lot more fuel than the other one, but if you look/ask around, you can get a hell of a lot of wood for free. It might not be the best quality seasoned hardwood, but busted up pallets and three summer dried Leylandii burn just as well beieve me, and although tree surgeons/landscapers usually sell the trunks they fell, you should be able to get the smaller branches vfor free, if you're willing to cut up and cart away. The downsides are the initial cost, purchase and installation, and it's not a light and forget system like a gas boiler, you have to be proactive in keeping the thing filled and directing the heat whether you're cooking or heating. The CH pump/controller works off the mains electricity, but as the whole system only uses around 80W, I've got a sparky designing a system to run it from a solar panel/inverter so we can run in the event of a mains supply failure. (It wil thermo-siphon up to a point tho'.)
Yes you need a lot of room to store a winter's worth of wood, even more so if you're getting it unseasoned and drying it yourself, and it is hard work cutting, spitting and stacking, but bloody satisfying when you've done.
On a final point about the smoke, if your flue meets regs, then smoke shouldn't really be an issue. Ours only smoke when first lit, as it's the moisture which causes the smoke you that see, once the flue is hot, we get next to no smoke at all. The 5KW exits through the old chimney, so that's above roof height, but the new one comes out at eaves height, and plenty of us have loft conversions above that height. So long as there are more than 2.3 linear metres from the flue to an openable window, there's no grounds for complaint.
Malthouse wrote:Whats the best combination of heating for a home, in your experience?
My other half and I are looking at adding some self sufficiency to the house, I was thinking of a wood burner running into the radiator system (is that even possible?) and also a solar water-heater supplying the hot water tank. Doing it that was round, I think, means that in cold weather the house is warm and there is hot water stored up from whenever the sun shines.
Any thoughts or experiences of doing similar would be much appreciated.
I used to live and work in a remote pub (private water but on grid) that had an open fireplace with a 'back boiler' that heated water which was pumped to radiators and the taps.. IMO open fires are a ridiculous waste of money in fuel terms (in SHTF do you really want a chimney saying welcome.. we're warm?) if you are looking for heat a wood burner is what you need.. less fuel, easier to light and you can use it as an oven/stove if push comes to shove... and smoke could be reduced by filtering it thru an underground network of pipes, underfloor heating stylie..
I would not recommend under any circumstances using an open fire in a house.. the pub was set alight twice in the year I was there - not for a lack of knowledge/safety using an open fire (I grew up in a house that had 3) but simply unfortunate incidents..
A log burner can be used with wet logs after the ash bed and flue is hot.. saving fuel but creating more smoke depends entirely on situation what you want/need to do..
Hope that helps...
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