Hi I am looking for recommendations for a multi-fuel stove. Will mainly be burning wood but would like to have the option. Preferably with a flat top and a suitable for a direct (external) fuel supply.
Thanks,
C.
What sort of direct fuel supply?
Are there *any* that even fit those requirements?
Multifuel stoves with a flat top are two a penny, ones with self cleaning large front windows are a bit rarer. Switching between fuels involves altering the grate so that coal burns with more air.
You pretty much have to put the fuel in through the front window with these and undertake various maintainence tasks like ash removal. Coal generating a fair bit more ash residues than wood does.
All of the direct feed solid fuel furnaces I have seen were in practice limited to a very specific size of pre-pelleted wood chips that were compatible with their screw feed fuel handling unit. Most of them looked pretty big and ugly too - the sort of thing you hide in an outbuilding.
I read that to mean an external fuel bunker where you put in wood pellets or smokeless coal grains and its fed in by a corkscrew.
Whether such a thing exists is another question, it it does exist in the case of solid fuel boilers.....
Will be pricey though
S.
This is a UK group, I'd feel you may be across the pond? Brian
Or in the case of my fire, just flicking over the ?bottom draft? lever.
Yep, not sure what the OP is really after. Screw feed stoves are designed for heating water, not to look pretty or to provide room heating. A ?rocket? stove maybe with a chute to feed fuel in?
Tim
This sort of thing:
However I can't imagine they would be good with coal, and the hopper is of the 'lift up and pour from a sack' variety rather than 'blow in pellets from your 1 ton store delivered by tanker'. So you're filling them from a sack every day or two depending on how much you run it. Plus you need to empty the ash pan.
A gas boiler it is not.
Theo
I stand corrected! Never knew such things existed.
Tim
We have Paul.....
They are more ornamental that functional though. 5.5kW max output.
The tie in to expensive compressed wood pellets puts me right off.
Unless your house is super insulated it is never going to power the central heating system. It might perhaps warm one room adequately.
Possibly a bit like the Parkray solid fuel central heating boiler and room heater we had yea those many years ago.
Poured anthracite pellets in the hopper at the top and raked ash and clinker out of the bottom. Worked well for a village without gas.
I don't think you could have cooked on it - the top was where the lid for the hopper was. We used a sold fuel Rayburn for cooking.
Cheers
Dave R
Chade does sound a bit USA, but what is in a name?
5kW is quite enough to heat up one room to ?stripping naked? temperature though. ;-)
Indeed. I collect and dry all my own firewood.
Tim
Presumably you don't throw enough on to get down to your undies every evening? So the 5kw is a red herring....
No they are not, I still have one of the 10kW ones we first imported in
2000, and envirofire 3. powerful enough to quickly get a scout hut/parish hall up to temperature.We put 4 italian soapstone clad ones into an arts hub in a converted warehouse in Euston, they worked well.
YUP they were about £300/tonne last I bought any, a 5 fold rise, which is why it sits doing nothing in my shed, also the circulation fan is a bit noisy for domestic use. It does have a small hotplate though.
I used to snag or service a 25kW Kunzel in a block of 12 flats in Brixton, it was adequate until some tenants turned the thermostat up full and regulated the temperature by opening windows as the heat wasn't metered (well it was but no one trusted the heat meters).
Thanks for your replies. However I must apologise I should have typed direct air supply rather than fuel supply. Sorry.
I am after a stove of about 5 kw and am hoping to pipe in the air from the side of the alcove rather than the back.
I am in the uk.
At the risk of causing more confusion after my hamfisted editing...
We have a smallholding and a few years ago someone tried to sell us a central heating boiler system that could be powered by wood chippings. The idea being that scrubby woodland could be cleared, chipped and the chippings used to power a 'fed' boiler. We never tried to go forward with it but the salesman seemed to think that there was various grants and subsidies that would make it very cheap.
What I am trying to do at the moment is just sort out a normal stove.
I can't see any where that's obviously the location of the input, space it far enough from the rear wall and put an elbow on the intake to take it from the side? Even build a false rear wall to hide the air input pipework?
Ive bought a Burley Hollywell 9105 very efficient (89%)
you can buy accessories for direct air supply and coal burning
Heats my big bedroom which is well insulated
If you were in Northern Ireland there was a scheme that would give you money proportional to the amount of fuel you burned no questions asked. The infamous ash for cash scandal which brought down the NI government.
Don't underestimate the volume of wood you will be burning if you are relying on it entirely for heating. I get through about 3T a year. It is cheaper than oil CH particularly when you have a source of free wood.
You basically need to tell us what you think is normal then. What power and what sort of cosmetic appearance. I went for a single large window and clean design lines which is more expensive but looks much nicer.
Mine is a Charnwood with a back boiler to power the CH and HW, a self cleaning front window which almost works and smart air mix control. The back boiler adds a lot to the price but makes it more useful for me.
You pretty much have to have them professionally installed because they are incredibly heavy and the process involves lining the chimney and possibly drilling a big hole in the wall for ventilation.
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