Wood Burning Stove

In March and April 2009 we organised the fitting of a wood burning stove. A friend of ours at the local Transition Town group put us onto a company called Nature's Warmth. We paid them a visit and had them come around for a quote. We liked the price (only in the region of £2500 - exactly what we expected) so asked them to proceed. There was quite a bit of discussion about which stove would fit. The previous house owners had bricked in the (already small) fireplace and fitted a tiny gas fire complete with fake coal. Needless to say, we never used it as we are a post-carbon family! To have one fossil fuel masquerading as another fossil fuel seemed absurd. So a wood stove seemed to be the way to go. We were not short of storage space for logs but were concerned for Milla's safety.

So along came the boys of Nature's Warmth who knocked out the fake fireplace and surrounding mantel. This revealed a larger gap into which they finally managed to shoe-horn a Dovre 250 without any further work. The Dovre is a smoke-free licensed unit so no worries there as we live in a smoke control zone. However this really limits your choice - as did the very small size of our fireplace. Even so the Dovre pumps out 4.9kw - not bad! The removal of the fire-surround had left some broken plaster but the boys came back and made-good. It only left us with a spot of repainting. They even furnished us with a neat metal edging strip for the newly exposed brick.

This has left us without a mantel so we are now going to have a sturdy wooden shelf mounted in its place. As we had hit the warmer months we have only had two opportunities to try the new stove. We had been left with a bag of wood by the installers so we gave it a spin one evening. The instructions for the device show it also using coal - which is a bit confusing. There are two airflow controls which you have to juggle by trial-and-error. The first attempt was not really successful and it didn't feel too hot. The advice of the Instruction book suggests not refueling more than 2 inches of the grate so we hardly put any wood on. So it really didn't get burning. Second time we filled it up with logs and this seemed to work a lot better.

The stove fits the fireplace very well and is inset completely into the wall. I was concerned that this would leave us no space on top to do any cooking. However there is more than enough space to boil a kettle and warm so food even if we haven't tried this novelty yet. As the stove fits so tightly in the wall there have been no concerns about child safety. Milla doesn't seem to keen to go too near it when it is alight as it is obviously so hot. The installer said that in their experience this is true of small children and seldom is too much protection required. We did have a look around for a fireguard but then abandoned the idea as unnecessary.

All that space above and below the stove is handy for storing and drying logs. We have now consumed our first batch of gifted logs so are shopping around for a bigger shipment. We have put aside log storage space on the gable-end of the house outside the garage. This has been cleared and a gate will be fitted to keep the children out. We have also had the broken fence replaced (at the end of April) leaving us with lots of spare wood for kindling and enough to build a compost heap. The household can now also boast an axe.

The last two pictures show here were added in August 2010 which show the stove after the first cleaning of the chimney. Note here the black metal surround that wasn't shown in earlier photos.

Wood Storage

A

In August 2009 we took delivery of around 1.5 cubic meters of firewood. Here we see it stacked up in two areas beside the house (photo 'A') and to the side of the garage (photo 'B').   For now we have covered the tops with plastic sheeting secured with other wood, bricks, stones and tiles.   We split the pile this way as it gave us a small buffer stock, near to the door, for easy retrieval. The larger stack is safer in an area where small children cannot access it. This stack could topple dangerously even when piled only to chest height. Another layer can be added for stability so we have some storage capacity. Enough for a full Winter's 2 cubic meters worth.

B

Update: August 2010

1

2

3

4

The four photos above show the three new "book-ends" constructed for the wood pile in the Summer of 2010. These are made of old bits of pallet wood and leftover pieces from the closed-board fence we had erected in June. The idea was to increase our wood storage capacity by allowing us to stack wood higher and more safely. The water butts you see in the picture were the original 'book-ends' but in the dry summer 2010 the water butt emptied and the wood started to push it over. The original purpose of the 'book-end' was simply to stop the wood pile from pushing over the water butts!  Two of the 'book-ends' stand behind the garage (pictures 3 left & 4) with a third against the side of the house (pictures 1 & 2). Photo 3 shows the whole area behind the garage with both wood stacks shown. In the last burning season only storage beside the house and beside the garage was used (see photos 'A' & 'B' above). The area beside the garage (along the side passage - see photo 'B' above) is still used.

The clear and orange sacks are empty Wood Pellet sacks in which we are storing cut up fence panels, pallets and other waste wood ready for winter. The thin sections on the old larch-lap have been kept for kindling and they have been stacked around the side of the garage inside the leftover sacks. We probably have two to four year's worth of kindling from our old fence panels. We offered to swap it for firewood but the one reply from the Transition Town only yielded more uncut cords of firewood that someone wanted to get rid of (thanks Ivan). These are stacked to the left of picture 3 above.

In the really bad/cold winter in the UK of 2009/2010 we probably got through about 5 or 6 cubic meters of firewood on the Dovre 250. We were only going to be buying in two-cubic-meter lots but will probably buy four when the current stock runs out. There should just be enough storage capacity now for the full 4 cubic meters and it should last the entire season all being well. We will need to purchase less for the Winter 2010/2011 because of the vast quantity of leftover wood from various pallets and fence panels we have acquired, plus the one cubic meter we have left over (photo '1').