wood burning stove or fire place?

[stilldreaming]

Is there a reason why people purchase wood burning stoves instead of a traditional fire places?

While redoing our house, I am at the point of choosing what to do with the fire place situation in the living room and it is daunting.

I like a lot the Stovax stoves, such as this one:

'Stockton 5 Stove | Stovax & Gazco, stoves, fires and fireplaces'

first, I was put off by the idea of having a traditional open fire place which has a whole in the wall (very energy-inefficient) but then there are these kinds, with retractable glass doors: 'Stûv - Vitre escamotable | Stûv 21 simple face' can also be installed with surround frame to look like a traditional fireplace).

I don't think the latter is less efficient. What am I missing?

[Andy Dingley]

Particularly for resinous softwoods, so there is secondary combustion of the distilled volatiles (resins) that boil out of the timber. They need to be enclosed in a hot secondary combustion chamber, so that the resins burn too.

If you don't do that, you're throwing resin vapour up the chimney. If you're lucky, it won't burn and so you waste half your timber's fuel value. If you're unlucky, the resinous soot builds up in the chimney and then it does catch fire.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes.

Open fires can set chimneys alight more easily than a stove. They are less efficient and they are often a tad draughty, and they operate over a narrower range of outputs and they can be rather smoky in draughts or with badly designed layouts.

And they spit out tracer.

IF you have the space and love open fires, do it. Otherwise go stove. You CAN open the door,.

[Stephen H]

with a traditional fireplace, about 90% of the useful heat goes up the chimney, leaving you with 10% to heat the room with.

With a well designed wood stove with secondary combustion chamber, they can put up to 90% into the room, leaving just 10% going up the chimney....

Another advantage of wood stoves is that as they have a door on them, there's lower risk of stray sparks spitting out and setting fire to your carpet.

I've filled my wood stove last thing at night, turned down the air vent, and it slumbered all night.

It gave out enough heat to stop the gas fired central heating from kicking in the following morning. You do need a well insulated house though to be able to hold the heat in for this to save you gas/oil/lpg.

Another advantage is money. If you can source yourself a source of free wood, you can reduce your gas/oil/lpg bill.

I have an arrangement with the local plumbers merchants where they dump their old pallets on my driveway.... All I have to do is run a circular saw through them and that's my firewood sorted. If I chop a few planks down thinner with a axe, that's the kindling sorted out as well.

I've had the wood burner 12 months now and not had to buy any wood. My only expense has been firelighters, Local free newspapers are also useful for starting fires with.

Regards

Stephen

[The Natural Philosopher]

You can also burn surplus wind turbine blades.

[Clive George]

...

The answer to the first question is that stoves actually heat the place, whereas open fires send most of the heat up the chimney. The difference is quite dramatic.

I suspect the stoves which sit in the room send more heat into the room than ones inset into the wall which will heat the wall for you.

[David WE Roberts]

One 'half way house' is a firebox. Less efficient than a stove, more efficient than a traditional fire, gives you that all round big flame effect. Like

or similar. Tortoise is one brand.

We had one, loved it. Next (smaller house) we had a Stovax Stockton 4. Loved this to. This house we are looking at somewhere between a Stockton 5 and a Stockton

1. The main thing to check is the length of log you can get in. Longer logs, less cutting :-)

[harryagain]

A closed stove will always be more efficient than an open fire.

A true woodburner admits most/all air over the top of the fire.

There are now available stoves that take air from outside the building via a pipe. ("Room sealed") This means you don't get cold air/draughts in the living space. This is a very major advantage.

It is vital your wood is dry. You will need a woodstore to dry it out arranged so the wood can be used in rotation.

It's vital to clean the chimney, any tar buildup can catch fire and cause serious damage. Your chimney will likely cost more than the stove. Existing chimney will need to be lined.

Be warned, they are filthy objects and the novelty soon palls.

[harryagain]

Still hallucinating? Ask nursey to give you more medication.

[AJH]

Can be worse in that if the house is warm the fire ejects warm room air up the chimney too. One of the attributes of a closed stove is reducing excess air going up the chimney.

Given that bone dry wood needs a fuel to air ratio of 1:5 and moist wood more air ( plus you lose all the latent heat) and you will be rejecting heat at over 150C the best case is 90% heat to the room realistically with 20% mc and 100% excess air you might achieve 70%.

AJH

[Huge]

I have a suspicion that in our case it's around 110% ... :o)

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is not vital that our woopd is dry. It is however advantageous to let it lower its RH over a few months before burning it. As long as uopi have SOME dry wood to start a fire, superficial;l;y wet wood is fine to lad on it.

WEer stack some imnside teh house for starter wood. Once going the wet stufffrom outside can be used.

No, it can catch faire and MAY cause serious damage. Or you might just a get a free chimney sweep service from the fire brigade :-

+1

Total bollocks.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Just looking fowrard to a 'green' future when there is no other form of heat, harry. And FITS and ROCS are distant memories. Along with central government.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Our open fires kick out up to 15KW apiece So lord knows how much is going up the chimney. A lot miore than coems out of te top of teh chimney as it tends to warm the house all the way up..

[Martin Brown]

Traditional fireplaces mainly heat the air going up the chimney.

You can get a rather cute (but for what it is incredibly expensive) fan device to move the warm air out of the stove alcove. Uses a TEC and a stylish heatsink with a small fan to move air when the stove is hot. Needs a bit of fiddling to get it to work if going DIY route. The gain of distributing more warm air into the room is surprisingly effective.

Mine (DIY) is rather less pretty and needs a pair of TECs one high temperature one and a lesser grade one to drive the motor. The pro design uses just a single high temperature TEC and a better? motor.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

A friend had one on top of the SF stove in his narrowboat, amazingly effective at distributing hot air around.

[Alan Braggins]

You can get even cuter ones powered by a Stirling engine:

more challenging to DIY - there are plenty of DIY Stirling engine plans out there, but mostly toys that only overcome their own friction.

[AJH]

It's the cool air from the room drawn over fins that's the cold sink.

The TEG ones with cheap bismuth piles seem to use a bimetal strip to jack the hot side off the hot plate if they get too warm.

AJH

[Alan Braggins]

Yes, exactly the same as the thermo-electric ones. (Or, until it gets going, just the fins sticking further way from the stove into cooler air.)

(I'm sure you could make it more efficient with heat pipes off to somewhere further from the stove, but that's a lot of complication compared with just putting something on top of the stove. If you need that, you're probably better off just putting a mains powered fan somewhere suitable, ducting if necessary.)