Hi
Heres one to think about on these cold nights.
We have lookes at a property that at the moment has no central heating. But does has 2 large wood burners. any one got any good ideas on heat exchangers for this, They must be able to be retro fitted and cheap. the actual heating would be undrfloor and rads. Dont bother suggesting fitting gas or elecric the properties are very rural and cost is important. BTW room sizes are 4 rooms 10M * 6M but any heat is better than none.
Ta in advance Ian
I'm guessing the property is old and draughty, right?
The problem you face is that you will need a lot of power. To derive this from wood, you will need *a lot of* wood. If you're bothering to put in rads and UFH, I'm going to assume you want to get those four huge rooms warm, not just above freezing. This simply isn't practically achievable with wood unless:
[a] You're prepared to spend a significant amount of your time maintaining the fires, or [b] You have servantsI would recommend oil. Doesn't matter how rural you are, you can get it. It's low maintenance and cheap.
Me too. We have plenty of wood but the main problem is wood burners are between 10 and 30% efficient. Presumably those with back boilers are presumably nearer the higher number as the heat exchanger will be nearer the source of heat.
What would really help would be a condensing heat exchanger as fitted to gas and oil boilers, but one would then need a fan to remove the poisonous fumes, and the acid in these would soon dissolve the fan and heat exchanger.
Hi Ian. Any old heat exchanger will do, you can get one from the local metal scrappers, but:
- if you have it anywhere except very high up the chimney you lose updraught
- you get muck and tar condense on the exchanger which then loses efficiency
so you could put one as high as poss in the stack.
Better in some ways is an iron insert which you then fan the air round once your fire is hot. Have used that very successfully.
Regards, NT
I'd say that most modern wood burners are efficient enough as it is. If you cool the smoke too much, you get problems with insufficient draw and the flue will soot up more quickly.
If you look up the manufacturer of the boiler, you can get back boilers - they attatch to the rear of the stove and allow you to heat water. You could have a pump or just rely on convection for it to reach upstairs rads.
BTW - you can get automated wood pellet room heater for which you can get a grant from the Clearskies initiative.
The boiler of any solid fuel heat source needs to be able to get rid of it's heat without power to avoid loud bangs and/or meltdowns...
The only sensible approach is a gravity loop to the HW cylinder (a wood burner is fully capable of boiling a cylinder full of water) and a heat dump radiator upstairs.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.