Friend is converting an old mill in east Staffordshire and wants to install a log burning boiler for central heating. He's been quoted £10,000 to install the boiler. He's done all the plumbing but we understand you have to get an "authorised" person to do the boiler. It seems like racketeering to me but does does anybody have a way out?
Another Dave
All very good questions to which I don't have a ready answer. Actually it's the son of my wife's friend so I'm not likely to get answers soon. All I know is that finding any other fitters is proving difficult.
Another Dave
It does rather depend on what this log burning boiler is... they can very quite dramatically in scale from a simple log burner with attached back boiler, to something more akin to the boiler the size of a small steam train! I can well believe the latter are many thousands just for the boiler.
A friend of mine had/has one heating a large farmhouse - its a significant bit of kit housed in a garage sized outbuilding. He kept lumps of tree and scrap wood from the farm stacked up near it. When it wanted feeding. he would let rip with a chain saw to get it into a size that would fit (it could probably take something the size of half a pallet in one lump), open the huge door at the front, and lob it in.
It was quite versatile - you could lob pretty much anything into it.
It will probably be a HETAS person who can self certify any installation Uunder building regs Part J.
The DIY alternative is to comply with Part J and have a building control person sign it off.
AJH
Ridiculous price. Be sure to get a "room sealed" one. ie draws air into the stove from directly outside.
If he's done all the plumbing why can't he install the boiler, flue etc? All piss easy jobs to do.
Too many people scared off doing this sort of work by the clueless snowflake people that squak "illegal", "notifiable", "authorised" etc etc. Also obviously people who make a living from doing this work will say whatever they were taught to say during the indoctrination of their expensive courses and people selling the hardware will cover themselves by saying the same things.
Simple get-out clause if selling would be...
"It was like it when I bought it" "I've lost the certificate of installation"
Everything is a scam. You can't officially fit your own bloody windows unless your "FENSTA" registered FFS.
People need to stop giving up their freedom by complying with the next wave of B.S. non-laws and get stuck in if they're capable of doing the job correctly and to accepted current standards.
Domestic wiring, Gas boiler fitting/maintenance, window fitting, wood burner fitting.... and guess what, I've not been carted off to prison or slapped with a heavy fine for non-compliance, no midnight raids from the Part-P Police or the Gas-Safe Mafia.
Just do-it
:)
Yes. I did mine under a building notice with BC sign off. (much smaller and no back boiler fitted, 12kW)
Thank you. I'll suggest that he look into that.
Another Dave
In message snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk>, Jim K.. snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes
If you must:-) Back boiler was optional.
A modern version may be marketed as Biomass, that will immediately get the buyer stung by the ?We know you want to save the planet and will pay to do so levy?.
GH
Get three quotes from different vendors/installers.
My system has a back boiler on a wood burning stove with manual log feed. I paid slightly above the odds for a stove with a particularly nice front window. It was nothing like £10k including the cost of the back boiler and conversion of the old open fireplace to take it.
£10k might be a bargain for an industrial chipped wood furnace setup with automatic pelleted feed. One of my plumber neighbours has one. (though it seems to be a royal PITA)
Mine is. Scrap wood is free and sometimes I have to buy it but both are cheaper than oil and 12kW stove will almost shut the oil boiler down. There is some lack of convenience cutting up scrap wood and stacking logs compared to just altering a thermostat on oil CH though.
Bulk solid fuel has to be manhandled daily and ash emptied out but the stove designs now are quite clever. The only practical catch is that you have to plastic bag ash before putting it in the dustbin and the ash from overnight is often far too hot to bag immediately.
I used to know a lad from a farming family whose home was heated by something which ate small bales of straw, a few at a time.
Its good exercise and OK except in really prolonged foul weather.
About two trug loads of logs/day if run flat out in the coldest weather.
It is but where I live we can still burn smokey coal if we wish! I could get more out of it by reconfiguring for solid fuel instead of wood too.
In message snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk>, Jim K.. snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes
Initially I planned to piggy back to the existing gas CH. I rather lost the plot when learning about balancing valves (Dunsley?) and there is a suggested issue that the water jacket lowers the firebasket temperature leading to sooting of the glass doors.
Basically it is a *feature* item that usefully uses up fallen timber and keeps me out of other mischief.
That can be overcome by clever airflow design so that the front glass is effectively self cleaning provided that you run it correctly. The only time mine gets a thin layer of tar and a slight soot deposit is when it is left damped down overnight and there is still a bit of wood left. The charcoal embers burn clean enough not to leave any deposit.
The water jacket does condense out some tar on its surface but that isn't a real problem. The superheater pipes in the outgoing flue stay remarkably clean. I am careful only to burn dry wood.
Mine now provides the bulk of our domestic heating provided that I can be bothered to supply it with wood (weather permitting).
How much is the boiler? pellet burner? Automatic feed? Kw?
3 quotes?Possibly someone trying to cherry pick the profit off the rest of the job to "punish" him for doing rest himself. Possibly a "don't want the job" price because he's done the rest himself...
Aka a "stove"?
Keeping it real ;-)
Once above say 5kw ISTR lots of stoves can be specced with a boiler. I wonder how many are ever used to their full potential...
Indeed.
Mind you "converting an old mill" sounds like lots of potential for a right old heat & money sink....
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