Stove Poll: If you had your time again would you still have bought your stove?

[difflock]

Our latest Morso, is not of the quality(too many internal shitty light steel air control/management  plates) of its 2 twenty year old predecessors, in hindsight I kinda wish we had bought the slightly smaller egg-shaped Astroflamme, that was a very strong contender.

mth

[Pete Mctree]

Love my Burley !

[slasherscot]

but how many of you would put a stove now in without free logs, dont think i would

[woodrascal]

I have to buy a lot of my logs in and I'd still put one in (we actually have six...)

[White Noise]

Love my little firefox 5 multifuel burner .

Kicks out some heat .

[Stubby]

1 hour ago, woodrascal said:

I have to buy a lot of my logs in and I'd still put one in (we actually have six...)

Six logs ! ?

[Bustergasket]

Have to say i have gone full circle on this, over the last 20 years each house we have fixed up i have put log burners in, always been happy, however last few years iam loving the open fires, and am seriously thinking of pulling the CBD severn out and going large open fire, chimney is 6 foot wide and 4 foot deep, thinking logs would be 3 ft long sensible diameter , slow burn and not as much heat as stove, it’s not needed as a primary heat source as we have the biomass, so it’s a toy thing really [emoji106]

 

[Squaredy]

50 minutes ago, Bustergasket said:

Have to say i have gone full circle on this, over the last 20 years each house we have fixed up i have put log burners in, always been happy, however last few years iam loving the open fires, and am seriously thinking of pulling the CBD severn out and going large open fire, chimney is 6 foot wide and 4 foot deep, thinking logs would be 3 ft long sensible diameter , slow burn and not as much heat as stove, it’s not needed as a primary heat source as we have the biomass, so it’s a toy thing really

 

I also have a love of open fires. 

 

I would say though if you want a cosy room a large open fire is a really bad idea.  The Victorians worked out that the ideal width of an open fire is 16 inches.  Any wider and it just gets less and less efficient. 

 

A six foot wide open fire will be great at extracting huge volumes of air from the room and keeping it cool and draughty.  But it may look really nice. 

 

If you want an open fire the best type is probably a Baxi Burnall, which is about 20-30% efficient.  I was brought up in a house with one of these and it was lovely and could get the room cosy, though not to the extent a woodburner can sadly.  They are still available though I wonder for how much longer.

[neiln]

exactly!  an open fire will cool a room in a modern house, taking more heat out by sucking huge volumes of heated (by another source) air up the chimney than it releases into the room.  look fab but.  You could go with a large fireplace insert though, a good way towards stove efficiency with a good chunk of the looks of the fireplace.

 

as for stove fitting if i wasn't scrounging free logs...well i wouldn't have the 2 stoves,  I'd definitely want one and would likely fit one but like the vast majority of stove owners thse days, I'd buy 1 or 2 cube of wood a year and just run th stove for a few hours on the odd midweek evening and a bit more at weekends....not like currently where i kick the *rse out of the stoves and get quite agitated if the gas boiler fires up.

[Billhook]

On 26/07/2018 at 17:34, timbernut said:

Hav an Aarrow Stratford runs heating n hot water, was 5years old when estate I do work for put some let houses onto biomass, it’s been brilliant apart from the odd issue with keeping glass clean.
Have had a couple of other Aarrows without Boulez over the years all been good

Another vote here for the Stratford, faultless now for eight years, fifteen radiators.

Two Clearviews, the original 650 with twin doors is excellent for room heating and log capacity but I do not like the double doors for a good seal.  The Pioneer Vision 500 is better in the office, a very good stove.

We have just bought a Danish Aduro 9, which seems to be very efficient and is pleasant to sit by with a lot of glass front and sides.  It also is very different to light and a small amount of wood lasts all evening.

 

I agree about a good open fire though and if we entertain we light an open fire in the living room.  I think that people are more comfortable around an open fire and conversation flows more easily with people who do not know each other. This is a three foot wide custom built design by Count Rumford back in the late 1700s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumford_fireplace

I asked the builder to do one when I built my house.  He was a very good old school bricklayer and had years of experience but very set in his ways.  Generally they stick with what they were taught when they were an apprentice and the air was full of foul language for a while  "Well in all my years I've never built a bugger like this" etc etc.

"You do what you like, it's your money down the drain"

Turned out to be a mistake when it turned colder as I came in from work and found them warming themselves in front of it when they should have been pointing bricks outside.  "Well I never would have believed it" was the comment now.

One of the secrets of an open fire is drawing the air from outside rather than creating draughts under doors so when we put the floors in I laid two four inch waste pipes in the concrete on either side of the fireplace so all the air feeding the fire comes from outside and there are no draughts.   There are sliding vents on each side to control the air but I never close them in practice.

I also built two mesh fire screen doors to keep it safe when we leave the room.