Installing wood burning stove - suppliers?

PurpleDragon · Installing wood burning stove - suppliers?

I currently have an oil combination boiler which is outside the house. The boiler is powered by electricity. We dont have any other form of heating for hot water in the house. If the electricity goes out, we get nothing - no heating, no cups of tea, no supper, no light.

What I would like to do is install a wood burning stove but as it is nothing I have ever done before I am at a complete loss as to where to start looking for a company that will supply and install one.

Anyone got any recomendations?

lachlanandmarcus

Theres one at Alford, helpful but very busy and might be too far?

http://www.donsideheatingsupplies.co.uk/

We installed a woodburner with a back boiler and that is a great success, takes the excess heat away and boosts the hot water.

PurpleDragon

Thank you! You're right enough, though, they might not come up so far. I can but try!

Martin

Suggestion - if you're going for a woodburner to heat your water, look at solar hot water too, either straight away, or as a possible later option - you'll need a thermal store (posh term for a well insulated hot water tank), so it's no great expense to add a solar coil in that store when you order it (probably £50 or so extra), which is the most efficient way to add solar, which you can use straight away, or it can just be left for later use - will save a mint on a second tank change, or "doing a kludge" to add solar at a later date.
Woodburners and solar work very well in the same system - wood for winter, solar for April-October, and will pay back really fast if it's supplanting an immersion heater in summer

PurpleDragon

Martin, I don't have an immersion heater - we don't have a tank at all. The boiler both heats our water and our house. No boiler - big bother!

In my living room I have a wall that backs onto the snooker room. The wall is really wide because the bloke who built the house put the snooker room on as a music room where he could play his organ. The snooker room doesn't have an upstairs like the rest of the house - just a small attic. I want to put the stove in the living room and flue up thru the wide wall and into/out of the small attic. I very much doubt I will get hot water out of the stove.

I would love to put an aga/rayburn into the kitchen but again I don't have anywhere to put the chimney.

What I really need is someone who sells all these things to come and ask me what I want to achieve, then tell me what I need to have installed!

Martin

Well, it's difficult to visualise, but you can put a woodburner with backboiler or wood range against an outside wall, and go through the wall and then straight up with a stainless steel "chimney", which'll work really well - not particularly pretty, but workmanlike...... If you can then find room for a "hot tank" it makes life loads easier - if it's a modern well-insulated sort, it can "even out" the heat as it goes in and out, and will give you hot water all day, even if the heat source is "out" some of the time - and in summer, if you've got the solar component, you need never have a fire............ A good system well designed and fitted is relatively "low tech", simple, reliable, and not too expensive!

Smooth Hound

sounds like your aafter a straight stove with no back boiler, something you can chuck a kettle on the top,
shouldnt be difficult with a flue going up the outside wall,

JamesB

yep, stand alone will certainly be easiest and no need to involve a plumber. biggest problem will be getting the flue through the wall (you'll need to get a core drilled if its stone) but once thats done, most builders should be able to do it. I've installed two stoves so far (workshop in prev house and main stove in this house). as long as you get the right type of flue and fittings will be ok. we used stovesonline to supply the stove and flue and the technical guy there was very helpful with the flue design.

the only problem we've had is that the outside section of the flue was folded seams rather than welded seams (I should of used the welded sections outside and folded sections inside but was easy enough to rectify)

James

P.s I got some flue pipe from a place down portlethen way, not sure if they are still around.

lachlanandmarcus

Ratchet

Dear PD

A little nearer to you is:

Speyside Stoves

Tel: 01466 792235

22, The Square, Huntly, Aberdeenshire AB54 8BR

I've had a few informative chats with the guy there. One thing though is that I got the impression that they only like to advise if you are going to buy the stuff from them, which is understandable. They have an arrangement with another guy who does the flue/chimney work. I personaly didn't get on with this guy as he appeared uninterested in doing the work unless he knew exactly what stove we were getting, that was impossible as we didn't and still aren't decided. We ended up buying flues/fill & fittings on-line and getting a local builder to put them in as this was much much cheaper and quicker. We haven't bought a stove as we don't yet have a floor to put it on. However we will go back to Huntly to see what stoves they have, when we're at that stage, as we would like to buy local if we can.

I think that they would be more interested in the job you want done as it's a nice neat package.

Yours

R

lachlanandmarcus

donside stoves were a lot more helpful than that to us, lots of advice despite us not buying a thing from them due to their waiting time and also they told us we could get the stove we wanted cheaper (and quicker) by buying it direct from Esse.

We got the plumber to install it (with the back boiler arrangement)

But speyside would be nearer for you.

IainC

It was Donside who provided and fitted our fire front nr 'meldrum, so I doubt you'd be too far away from them to deal with.

They came back within a year to resolve an issue FoC as well... would always recommend them.

PurpleDragon

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I don't think those options will be any good - apart from the names of the suppliers.

I would need to put the flue in an inside wall as all our outside walls have big windows in them - too big to put a stove / chimney around. The flue would have to go thru our downstairs loft and out the low roof.

Thanks for the tips, guys

lillyann

we bought our stove from speyside stoves and we got huge discount as i picked the stove i wanted searched the internet for the cheapest one and he matched the price, and we used the boys that he recomends. They were good worked until they were finished and tidied up after them selfs.
the biggest thing i grudged paying for was the chimney lining but my man has just said he got money of that as well. There is a company at mintlaw as well and they have there own fitters.

terrier

hi purple dragon,
sorry but cannot recommend an installer. best thing to do is look in yellow pages and get someone to look at the job and give you a quote for installation only and tell you what parts are needed, then order parts from stovesrus - who i can recommend. from what you have described and what i have been told it will probably be quite expensive as you will need to use stainless steel rigid insulated flue (£100+ per meter) and your flue will need to be higher than your roof top. when i was trying to get someone to install my stove they where wanting lots of money for what turned out to be a simple job and had a waiting list of several months.
good luck,
terrier

IainC

Martin

There's been quite a lot of talk about picking the local company's brains, then trying to "do it on the cheap" - my suggestion is simple - don't!
If you want to "do it cheaply" by all means go to one of the "el cheapo" internet emporiums, and use whoever they recommend for fitting, but to expect a local company with a reputation to maintain, and guarantees to uphold to fit some load of chinese rubbish is "pushing your luck" - there are many cases where people have "saved money"- often as little as £50, and been bitterly disappointed with the results.
(There are some really good items coming out of China, unfortunately, most of their stoves are at the "appalling" end.........., and I've recently read true stories about one Scots company that tries to make them sound as if they're "Made in Scotland")
Couple of suggestions - firstly, Navitron supply "Woodwarm" stoves which are damned good, and reasonably priced for what they are.......Secondly, here's a "woodburner test site", which may help you miss some of the bigger pitfalls - http://www.whatstove.co.uk/ - and last but not least, expect a full install to cost somewhere in the region of 2-3 times of the "bare stove" - the installation of the stove, flue etc isn't cheap if done properly - it is VERY unwise to skimp or do it yourself/use a general tradesman unless properly inspected- carbon monoxide is a silent killer, and a dead family is a heavy price to pay for saving a few quid!

IainC

Yup... I looked into getting a stove online and then getting someone else to fit it locally, and in the end we bought it from Donside, who were able to give us all the info we wanted, and to make the firefront fit the fireplace we had. I think in the end it might have been up to £100 dearer than taking the chance with the same thing off the net, but as mentioned, Donside have been really good at sorting any issues we've had with it so far.

If we were planning on staying in our current house for a long time, then I'd also be looking to fit solar hot water to it as well (nothing feels dafter than putting a fire on to heat the water when it's 20 degrees C outside

)

Martin

Don't panic! - the "ideal" way is to have a pukka "solar coil" in the tank, but there are now several ways to add solar to an existing tank - if in need, yell, and I'll point you in the right direction!

Julie

I wondered where speyside stoves had gone to!!!They used to be in Keith.

If it's just the means to make tea and generate a bit of heat you want PD, you might consider a gas hob. The only structural work you need that way is a small hole bored through the wall to fit a slim gas pipe through. You have a bottle of propane stood outside and to just run a gas hob, one refill will last ages. I think it must be a few years since we replaced our last bottle for our hob. Sometimes, if it's cold and I want to heat the room up quickly, I put three gas jets on for ten minutes, it works a treat. It won't cost the earth and you can do the job yourselves.

Ratchet

Dear All,

I'm very happy with the quality of the flue I ordered over the internet. I over specified as I don't know what size of stove/open fire that I want/require. I ordered 2 x 8" flues as they are capable of being used for open fires 904/904 (for the harder working chimney) and 904/316 (for the one used less often). These were British Made to order (as apparently it's not a commonly requested spec) and were just over half the price of what I could obtain from a local company (who were unable/unwilling, to supply 904 grade in any case). As it happens the company supplied 2 x 904/904 becasue of the effort in setting up the machine. A local builder fitted them as neither of us are good at heights. The chimneys now draw a treat; we had a we fire on the hearth stone to check them out and when you look up them there's plenty of light coming down.

I'm probably going to get howls of protest from qualified flue installers but in our case it wasn't exactly rocket science; it could have been a DIY job. In nore complicated circumstances like PD's a professional is probably needed. What we will take advice on however is the sizing of the whole system and piping of an air supply to the stove as when we've "draft proofed" the house we won't be able to rely on the drafts for efficient combustion.

Services/materials are more expensive up here for a myriad of reasons and local companies sometimes take advantage of the lack of competition / general richness (oil related) of the area by having their prices higher than is justified.

I'd love to use just wood in my stoves, but at the moment the cost of it is just silly, so back to coal.

Any way it's too late, I'm too grumpy and too way off topic so

Seeya

R