Heating

[renewablejohn]

I have also been disappointed with my Esse W23 even to the point of replacing with another stove. Top of the replacement list so far is this wood/pellet model as it will cope better with our lifestyle.

 

Lohberger Stoves - natural heating

 

As for central heating I cannot fault the Dunsley Yorkshire keeping this big old farmhouse nice and warm.

[haforbes]

Should point out that I never said the firewood I have is free, I have approx 20acres of woodland on the farm and have the means of getting it, cutting,splitting and storage. All of which I would hope costs less than heating oil.

 

I'm looking at an Eco Angus boiler myself - for a domestic property. It works in conjunction with a heat store - you heat that up and then get hot water through a heat exchanger and heating water direct off the store.

 

Any Idea on how much wood would be used annually? Also, how often you need to load it up with logs?

 

What's your budget? Is yours a domestic or non-domestic property?

 

 

Budget would depend on wether any funding is available and if I choose to just do my part of the house or all 3 dwellings. And it's a domestic property.

 

Thanks for the replies so far.

As for central heating I cannot fault the Dunsley Yorkshire keeping this big old farmhouse nice and warm.

 

Is that a stove or a range? Not that it's that important but can you cook on the top of it of the stove?

[phatty]

we have an esse ironheart. can't fault it. cooks and hot water.

[windfall]

Yes sorry, once i got of my high horse about 'free' logs i realised that it was Stereo that had interpreted your comment about having plenty of firewood as meaning free. But i still thought that Stereos ' ' needed elaborating on as like him it really annoys me when people think logs are free.

 

Back on track.. I have been looking at external log boilers, these would offer you a solution to heating the three properties that you need to heat. You build a good sized shed/outbuilding positioned between the properties to house the log boiler and a few cubes of logs. The boiler has a hopper that auto feeds in logs as it needs them, if you are making your own logs then you can cut them to the exact size required.

 

You can use the log boilers as part of a heat exchanger system or on its own and you can get them in various sizes.

[Woody Wood Pecker]

Should point out that I never said the firewood I have is free, I have approx 20acres of woodland on the farm and have the means of getting it, cutting,splitting and storage. All of which I would hope costs less than heating oil.

 

I'm looking at an Eco Angus boiler myself - for a domestic property. It works in conjunction with a heat store - you heat that up and then get hot water through a heat exchanger and heating water direct off the store.

 

 

Any Idea on how much wood would be used annually? Also, how often you need to load it up with logs?

 

 

According to my house size and the tables on the eco angus website, I would need an 18kw boiler. However, as we are thinking of extending the house, it was recommended that we put in a 25kw boiler. The fuel usage was said to be 6 tonnes of seasoned hardwood per year - not sure if this is for the extended house (about 160m2) or pre extended (90m2).

 

I'm hoping to reduce the wood usage as much as possible by insulating the house as much as possible - we had cavity wall insulation a couple of years ago and it made a massive difference. I'm hoping that insulating under the floor and in the loft will reduce the heat loss further.

 

Somewhere on the Eco Angus website it gives graphs showing house size in square metres verses boiler size and insulation. I can't find it now though.

 

Here's a case study though which is roughly what I was advised re loading.

 

Eco Angus Wood Burning Boilers - Case Study

 

I've been advised by other means that a wood run on a coppice system would produce about 9 tonnes of wood per year for three hectares.

 

Hope that helps. All my information is through research rather than experience. If we do go ahead, we intend to get the system next summer.

 

G

[WINTERBOURNE]

Somewhere on the Eco Angus website it gives graphs showing house size in square metres verses boiler size and insulation. I can't find it now though.

 

Here it is.....

http://www.ecoangus.co.uk/ecoangus_images/ECO10010%20Product%20Brochure%20281009.pdf

 

Please see page 3 orange graph

As a rule of thumb 1kW will cover 10m2 of a well insulated property.

 

For those interested here is a picture of my installation in Somerset

 

http://www.ecoangus.co.uk/ecoangus_images/Eco_Angus_Wood_Gasification_Log_Boiler_installation.jpg

 

I have an Angus Orligno 200 40kW with a 2700l Akva accumulator tank that covers my central heating and domestic hot water requirements for a 6 bedroom 350m2 home as per picture.

[Stereo]

Winterbourne (Guy?), how do these machines do on pallet wood? We are looking at installations for our home (3 bed barn conversion with 1000l Heat Store currently heated by gas combi and Esse W23) and also a full install in our business unit.

 

We get a whole load of pallets every year. I'm guessing this could be mixed in with seasoned stuff?

 

PS: well done on the videos. They are a great help and very informative. Would certainly tip my purchasing descision.

[WINTERBOURNE]

Our boilers will burn all softwoods, all hardwoods.

Pallet wood is absolutely no problem.

Even if there is nails or bolts in the wood these will fall through eventually into the combustion chamber with the (very minimal) fine ash.

I have been burning old floorboards from my house for the last week that have plenty of nails.

I clean out the combustion chamber once a week and put the half coal bucket of ash on my vegetable patch ( i have a garden riddle that fishes out the nails first).

Now that i have turned the heating off i can get accumulator tank to 90°C and this can provide hot water for about 4 days now.

When the top stat on my tank gets down to 50°C i just do another batch burn. This would be a full loading chamber that would burn through in gasification mode in about 4 hours and the tank would be back up to 90°C to go again.

What they do not like is MDF, chipboard or plywood bacuase of the glue....not good for emissions.

The pallet wood would be best used as a mix with softwoods or hardwoods as you will prolong the burn time.

It is also good wood to build up the ember layer when you start the fire before adding the chunkier stuff to fill up the loading chamber.

[RichardT]

we have an esse ironheart. can't fault it. cooks and hot water.

 

We've been happy with ours too generally, it also provides our only space heating. V well insulated new house though, with basically all rooms opening off the kitchen/living area, so the layout was sort of designed around the stove.

 

On the minus side the boiler has recently started whistling/buzzing a bit, presumably kettling around scale in the vessel, so at best we're needing it thoroughly flushed, at worst a new boiler vessel.....also the baffle plate warped and needed replacing. We may have been working it a bit harder than the typical lifestyle accessory market Esse had in mind...?

 

We also looked at the Italian equivalents from Broseley &c.

[Alycidon]

We have an esse W23 and are a bit dissapointed to be honest. It's nice to have burning away and provides ambient heat and cooking and I'm sure adds to the hot water but not as much as I would like.

 

Looking at an eco Angus to heat our expensive heat store which the Esse doesn't.

 

I am an Esse dealer, currently the Esse wood burning cookers with boilers have 2 sizes of boiler, the WD has a 7000BTU (2kw roughly) boiler so domestic hot water only and the W35 has a 33,000 BTU boiler (9.7kw) so DHW + 3 decent double rads. The new 3 oven 990 model has a DHW size boiler only.

 

The products are principally cookers that also heat water, they will not qualify for lower rate VAT and will not as far as I am aware qualify for RHI incentive payments. These are only available for bits of kit whose principal job is to heat water, ie boilers.

 

I would though love to be proved wrong on the RHI issue.

 

I have sold several with no complaints at all, some have been linked into bulk energy stores. Fuel wise, I used an Esse live at a 2 day outdoor show last summer, lit at 6,30am, charged with 2 bits of dry ash about 350mm long x 100mm dia and 3 heat logs at 6.45am, heat running around the ovens full time, temperature gauge soon off the scale. I was opening the firebox door every 5 minutes to show customers, at 2pm I had nothing in the firebox but ash, I put another 2 bits of Ash on just to show some flames. At 10pm the oven temp reading was still on Med Hot.

 

The Esse wood fired cooker is a very very fuel efficient device, very well insulated the heat output to the kitchin is about 5kw, same as a decent size double rad. You just need to feed it with dry ( min 20% MC) wood or heat logs or smokeless solid fuel.

 

A