County4x4

The "proper tests" I referred to were nothing more scientific than taking various temperature readings in different locations with and without the ecofan in use. It's fair to say that almost everyone who has one seems to think they're great, and generally the ones who say they're rubbish or "can't possibly work" don't have one! The design has changed a bit fairly recently - the new models have slightly increased air movement too.

You're not supposed to feel a draught - that's the whole idea! They move a lot of air very gently so you don't really notice - not much fun sitting right in front of the average fan heater! Almost everyone who uses an ecofan seems to reckon they're great - and I've come across a couple who have done proper tests to prove the difference they make. Popular on narrowboats too as the stove is usually at one end.

I can't think of any possible reasons why not mate - they're basically just a very dense woodfuel, and there's nothing else in them apart from wood. I've never run a gasification boiler but we've run our stove on nothing but briquettes for years now, and to be honest the only way I'd want to go back to logs would be if they were coming out of my own woodland.

Have you got enough headroom above the stove to sit an ecofan at the back of it? Stoves buried in fireplaces will always take longer to get things up to temp - but on the plus side - may put more heat into the brickwork etc which will keep the temp of the room up for longer once the stove is out as the masonry holds the heat like a thermal mass stove. An ecofan will help to move that heat out of the alcove and around the room though.

No worries mate - tell him the chimney sweep sent you! I was supposed to go and see him about a joint promotion sort of thing - y'know, I promote his logs and he suggests his customers in this area get me round for tea and cake - but it was just before sill season kicked off and I never got round to it! Must try and make a point of going to see him this year! Andy

Lakeland logs up Penrith way will do 2+ cube of seasoned to your area at £80/m3 delivered Hodge - that's retail. They'll do wholesale on 10 cube or more and I'm guessing that'll be cheaper still

Briquettes generally come in at around 5% moisture - pellets are a bit higher, but would normally require a dedicated stove/boiler to burn them properly - you couldn't just bung them in an appliance designed to burn logs. In energy terms, briquettes often work out a fair bit cheaper than logs - unless you're getting logs from your own woodland or very cheap. KIln dried logs are usually around 18 - 20% (and often no drier than well seasoned logs dried naturally, as well as being a lot more expensive!) Briquettes are always exactly the same from load to load and season to season, though you'll find that extruded ones last a lot longer than pressed ones.

Hazzygawa - not knocking your stove mate - but that's a really old fashioned design, and to be honest - it will be completely outperformed by a modern efficient design, with the secondary air usually being preheated and introduced over the top of the fire and down the glass at the front. You don't really want it roaring - if it is then it's probably got far too much draught going through it, and woofing half the heat straight up the chimney. What we generally aim for is a brisk fire to get everything going - many stoves will benefit from having the door cracked open while doing this. Once everything is nicely alight and the stove and flue are getting hotter, the door can be closed and the fire regulated by using the secondary air control alone - with the primary completely closed. In most cases the primary will be redundant anyway as it will be covered by the ash you've allowed to build up in the bottom of the stove. The result is gently rolling flames that sort of hover in the firebox, or reach downwards from the top - it's basically the woodgas coming off and igniting. You have a much lower airflow through the stove, and much more heat absorbed by the body of the stove rather than going up the flue in a roar. Just a note on flue liners - there are ones available in 316 and 904 grade stainless. 904 is more resistant to corrosion and is advisable for boiler stoves or when using smokeless fuels regularly. However - a good quality 316 liner will often outlast a cheap 904 one - and I've seen 316 in pieces sitting on the register plate after less than three years on a boiler stove burning smokeless all the time!

Yep you can get chimney cameras to attach to rods if you need to have a good look - though when you're doing them every day, you tend to develop a knack of learning quite a lot by what you're getting down from the brushes or flail head.

Unfortunately membership of one of the trade bodies does not guarantee you'll get a good job at all - if only it did! I've followed members of HETAS, GMCS and all the others on to jobs where they've ripped the customer off or given advice that's wrong or even plain dangerous. My advice would be to ask around locally to see who the locals are using and happy with, or try checking on the Chimney Sweeps forum (yep - we have a forum too!) to see if any of the members there are local to you. As far as sweeping frequency is concerned - all the trade bodies will tell you that a woodstove should be swept "quarterly when in use". They do however have to cater for everyone, including those folk who think wood that's been sitting in a swamp for years will be fine "once it gets going". I've seen liners where I couldn't even get the rods up, never mind a brush, and you can achieve this in a matter of a few months if you really try! In practice, the best person to advise is the sweep - the vast majority of my customers are fine with an annual visit though. Creosote is funny stuff - there are forms that look like black glass which are very hard to remove with traditional gear, other forms that are sticky, some which will run down the inside of the flue, and dry crunchy deposits that look like the indside of a crunchie bar - these are often formed when the glassy type catches fire. Power sweeping will take out a lot more than a traditional brush - but the gear is probably way too expensive for the average home user.

Well it's a thought - but I'd be very surprised if that's why they were doing it to be honest. The management decisions concerning these places are usually made by people in offices miles away - very much like the way British Waterways used to work (they even sent people from the offices who were "in charge" for days out to go and see how a canal lock worked!) They probably wouldn't dare risk any bad PR about "squirrel murdering" as no doubt many members of the public who generally have no idea would be up in arms about it. We used to get the same when we started thinning out dense stands of self set sycamore monoculture - "bloody vandals cutting trees down" etc. The fact that many of these stations had squirrels who were quite happy to feed whilst being gawped at by groups of people about three feet away suggested that they were quite used to it.

I started my work with trees in the country parks and various woodlands owned by Notts County Council, as part of a brand new forestry team at the time. It was a good set up and they'd spent a lot of money on buying quality equipment. They went on to spend a lot of money through our team on restoration work in neglected areas, rabbit fencing, new plantings and ongoing weeding and beating up - you name it. By the time I left some ten years later a lot of places were looking a whole lot better than when we started - nice mix of native species all doing very well. I still go for a walk round some of the old spots if I'm down that way every few years or so - but last time I went I was amazed to see that they seemed to be actively encouraging the greys nowadays with feeding stations all round the place on the more well used footpaths - presumably so tourists could make "ahhhh" noises about the "cute little squirrels". After all the work we put in to improve things it narked me no end I have to say!

The anti downdraught chimney cowls are just that - they help to stop sudden downdraughts when it's windy. When it's not windy - they will almost always REDUCE the draught of the chimney, so if the pull is marginal to start with, they may well make things even worse in calm conditions. There should be a soot trap on a T piece at the bottom of the flue pipe and the sweep will have (or certainly should have) emptied this when he swept it. Many stoves will benefit from having the door left just cracked open when you're lighting - though if you have a cold chimney and the draught has reversed this won't help - if that's the problem then you need to get a bit of heat into it just to get things moving.

Has the stove been lit regularly, or left cold for a few days? You can often get a "cold plug" sitting in the chimney if it's been out for a while. One of our chimneys suffers from it - though not the one right next to it for some reason! I'd suggest lifting the baffle plate out, and lighting a scrunched up sheet of newspaper and holding it under the flue outlet - this should put enough heat into the chimney to get the plug moving then assuming the chimney is in fact clear, you should be good to go. Put the baffle plate back in though! Also when starting it - use a good bit of paper and kindling which will produce a good bit of heat without much smoke to get the draught established in the chimney.

How much did you pay Hodge if you don't mind me asking?

Just discovered that I'm on it too! As above - site never been mentioned by anyone calling me.

They look expensive mate. However, if you look at the energy they contain, they often work out cheaper than logs. They're also a lot more reliable - you know exactly what you're going to get because they're always exactly the same from load to load and year to year. Obviously wood prices vary a lot around the country and it's a given that many people on this forum will be burning their own logs - but if you're buying in at normal retail price, briquettes are often a lot cheaper. Most of our average customers, and we ourselves will go through the whole winter on a single pallet - and we'd need a fair few cubes of logs to do the same. Kiln dried logs locally are selling at about £135/m3 at the moment, and that's a special offer! We'd spend a lot more using them, and take up a hell of a lot more room storing them too. As far as "ingredients" go - the thing you mentioned is one of the reasons, and there are a few, why I don't deal in imported briquettes. Buying British means I can turn up at the factory and have a walk round. I've heard of a couple of imported briquettes that "had a chemical smell" and left some very odd colured ash! If they're coming from Estonia or Latvia, I'd agree completely that there could be anything in them!

If only it were that simple! There's as much difference between different types and makes of briquettes as between poplar and beech! The public could be forgiven for thinking "a briquette is a briquette" but the differences are huge, and in use, it often works out that a cheap briquette on paper works out to be more expensive than a pricier one, as you use more. We were asked to trial some a while back - made from oak, cherry, walnut etc from a flooring firm. Made in a cheap press though - so very soft in comparison to a good briquette - shovelfuls of sawdust in the bottom of the bag give the game away every time. Our stove would go through 15kg easily over an evening. By comparison, the ones we sell and use now - we'll use probably 5kg tops in the same stove and there'll still be embers the next morning. That means you'd have to multiply the cost of the cheap ones by three to get a realistic comparison - and if you did that, the briquettes that looked like a great bargain to start with would actually cost you considerably more than our "expensive ones" Same with size and shape - one of our customers was trying some nugget type briquettes made from "100% Oak!" Doesn't matter what they're made of - if they're small and soft they won't last five minutes - which is exactly what he told us when he'd tried them, along with saying he wouldn't be buying any more.

Always a bit wary of flue dampers personally. Had several customers with them fitted to cheap stoves and they've got up (thankfully) in the middle of the night to a room full of smoke. Our stove tends to stay in overnight using firewood briquettes without even trying. We never load it up at bed time, or shut the air down - it just gets left at whatever setting it was running at, and nine times out of ten there are still red hot embers in the morning. We sell quite a lot to narrowboat owners who find they can't keep their small stoves in using any other sort of woodfuel, and those who don't want to use coal for green reasons think they're great!

Half the trouble with the County transmission was that people didn't know how to use it! That's why they have stickers with the instructions on the windows and dash! There's no centre diff - so using the 4x4 on hard surfaces won't do it any good - that's the reason so many have the front prop disconnected. It's basically like driving a 110 with the difflock engaged. As far as ability goes I can't say I've ever had any trouble at all - and the number in use with mountain rescue teams suggests that they don't either. I think the biggest problem they have is getting through narrow gates in walls up on the moors. As far as stability is concerned - to be honest I was surprised when I first bought mine by how good it was on the road - very little roll. MJ Allen designed the new AWD system for the current Transit - but it's one of these "intelligent" systems that sense when wheels are spinning - the vehicle ride height is normal so not really designed for proper off road use - more like muddy building sites and the like. The original County Transits are often advertised for silly money - but they often don't get it - though being a bit of a rarity they usually fetch more than a normal van of the same age. There was a guy who fitted Landcruiser running gear to a Mk3 Transit with very little bother - seemed almost made to measure. He also got the benefit of a 4.2 diesel which took up a bit of cab space but certainly made a difference!

Most people that have them swear by them. The people who say they're rubbish don't have one! I have an account with the distributors and may well be persuaded to cut you a good deal if you want one - you being a local and all! There are Chinese copies about which the manufacturers are not happy about - especially when customers return the fakes to them for repairs! The Ecofan ain't a particularly cheap bit of kit, but it's pretty well made, and very well made compared to the fakes. Oh - and there are people who say that a pc fan or something will do the same job. It won't. The Ecofan is designed specifically to move a lot of air very gently so you don't really notice a "draught" from it - a pc fan does pretty much the opposite and moves a small amount of air quite fast.

Much conflicting advice about as usual! The bit from the Log Pile site saying "it is necessary" - well that's not strictly true is it?! It may be helpful, and it may be advisable, but that doesn't make it "necessary". I sweep plenty of perfectly acceptable chimneys where a woodstove is fitted into the original open chimney - and much of the time, if dry wood is used, there isn't a problem. Some can be rather tarry - especially in cold external walls, but not all by any means, so I'd dispute "necessary". Many installers will insist on a liner, but this is often more to do with covering their own backs later down the line, as a liner can avoid various problems such as tar coming through the walls in upstairs rooms and so on. The conditions inside a chimney serving a stove are completely different to those in one from an open fire. So I don't mind installers insisting on a liner. What I do object to is some of them telling customers they must have one, or it's a legal requirement, or stuff like that. I don't install stoves myself - but I have a very good HETAS chap who I've been recommending for years - and I also make a point of telling them they are perfectly entitled to do the work themselves if they wish - give them a link to Part J of the regs, and tell them about getting the job signed off by building control.

Guys - I'm not having a go at you or anything - but this is one of those things that crops up quite often on forums. I guess most of you would be taking the mick about householders doing their own tree work, or other people ignoring TPOs or whatever - but it's fine to ignore building regs and so on where a stove is involved! Building regs ARE a legal thing at the end of the day - and if there are issues with insurance over a chimney fire, or the worst case scenario - carbon monoxide fumes leaking into next door - there WILL be issues and you WILL be liable. "Other trades" are always trying to rip everyone off or that's how it's seen. The fact is that they probably view the £20 a metre liner off ebay the same way you might view a "professional" Chinese 90 quid saw painted orange - there's a world of difference between that and decent stuff. There's nothing at all in law to stop you fitting your own stove - BUT why not finish it off properly and get it signed off by Building control - hell of a lot cheaper than using a HETAS fitter but you know you're covered if anything goes wrong. I know it all seems like unnecessary expense - but you could say that about car insurance too and I bet you pay that every year!

Haha - tight northerners or what mate?!! Cut it up into very small sticks and put them in one at a time! Seriously though - we only burn briquettes here. I've done my share of logs over the years and wouldn't go back to them unless they were coming from my own wood to be honest!