Multifuel burner for my living room.

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trax said:
not in my experience. lpg used to cost me more than heating oil and back then you couldn't switch suppliers.

i think it would still work out cheaper buying in wood to run a wood burner, if you aren't on mains gas.
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I'm just speaking from my own experience and I appreciate everyone's situation is different. I'm not on mains gas so use propane and oil, neither cost a lot (propane approx. £120 last year, oil approx. £600 last year) and of course there's no standing charges. As for the wood, I have several acres of dense woodland to harvest from. Once a month I take the landy and trailer into the woods, I cut all the fallen wood into 16" lengths until I have a full trailer. Cost of fuel for landy and chainsaw, negligible.

I could buy in hardwood logs at £90 per trailer load (8x4 trailer), but I don't need to. Which brings me to the point that if you had to buy in logs you could easily burn £90 of logs per month. If that's what someone is willing to pay then fair play to them ;)
 
Nigel-S said:
I'm just speaking from my own experience and I appreciate everyone's situation is different. I'm not on mains gas so use propane and oil, neither cost a lot (propane approx. £120 last year, oil approx. £600 last year) and of course there's no standing charges. As for the wood, I have several acres of dense woodland to harvest from. Once a month I take the landy and trailer into the woods, I cut all the fallen wood into 16" lengths until I have a full trailer. Cost of fuel for landy and chainsaw, negligible.

I could buy in hardwood logs at £90 per trailer load (8x4 trailer), but I don't need to. Which brings me to the point that if you had to buy in logs you could easily burn £90 of logs per month. If that's what someone is willing to pay then fair play to them ;)
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Your gas and oil isn't too bad. i'd be happy with those prices. Is the gas just for cooking?

You're right, it does depend on the house and insulation. I was paying roughly £300 per 500l of kero iirc (it was a couple of years ago). I'd say I used probably one tank (2500) a year and it wasn't on 24/7. This was a stone cottage in the middle of a field in the hills though ;)

I've had lpg in two places, one was some rural estate communal lpg thingy, so it acted like mains gas, but more expensive. The other was the usual setup. It would seem use the same amount as oil, but cost more and we were stuck on a contract.

I do tend to stick with rural stone cottages, maybe that's why it costs so much :D
 
Nigel-S said:
As for the wood, I have several acres of dense woodland to harvest from.
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If we're comparing apples to apples, how much does several acres of dense woodland cost in West Dorset? ;) I'm sure it's investment value would go up regardless, but real term comparison costs could be worked out by valuing the wood you take out per year at roadside wholesale prices.
 
trax said:
Your gas and oil isn't too bad. i'd be happy with those prices. Is the gas just for cooking?

You're right, it does depend on the house and insulation. I was paying roughly £300 per 500l of kero iirc (it was a couple of years ago). I'd say I used probably one tank (2500) a year and it wasn't on 24/7. This was a stone cottage in the middle of a field in the hills though ;)

I've had lpg in two places, one was some rural estate communal lpg thingy, so it acted like mains gas, but more expensive. The other was the usual setup. It would seem use the same amount as oil, but cost more and we were stuck on a contract.

I do tend to stick with rural stone cottages, maybe that's why it costs so much :D
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2,500 litres/year is a lot but then it depends on how efficient your boiler is. I reckon on about 1000 litres/year, that's for hot water and radiators (not that the rads go on much with the woodburner burning 24/7). Then for cooking we use 2 x 36kg propane bottles/year. Electricity is not a lot, all bulbs are energy savers which just leaves the computers (don't use a tv anymore, too tight to pay for licence :)). I do have generator backup if all else fails! My house is quite old, about 300 years old so the walls are pretty thick, the loft is insulated and windows are double glazed. At the moment I'm working on a wind generator (not the windmill type) and that should bring the leccy bills down a bit more.
 
Nigel-S said:
2,500 litres/year is a lot but then it depends on how efficient your boiler is. I reckon on about 1000 litres/year, that's for hot water and radiators (not that the rads go on much with the woodburner burning 24/7). Then for cooking we use 2 x 36kg propane bottles/year. Electricity is not a lot, all bulbs are energy savers which just leaves the computers (don't use a tv anymore, too tight to pay for licence :)). I do have generator backup if all else fails! My house is quite old, about 300 years old so the walls are pretty thick, the loft is insulated and windows are double glazed. At the moment I'm working on a wind generator (not the windmill type) and that should bring the leccy bills down a bit more.
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hell wish we could get by with 2,500 liters.we go through about 1,000-1,2000 gallons of lpg a year. Got 400 gallons being delivered tomorrow last about 6 weeks
 
All my expense on gas is for heating/hot water with a combi boiler so it's not as if I'm constantly boiling a tank of water in a 1962 built detached house.

So I can't even rely on next door neighbours to warm my walls.

All the sums here are cheaper than my huge gas bill.

So it's still making sense to either move to a stone cottage or find an alternative heating source.
 
That's not too bad Nigel, 8 acres of (wet) pasture was 20k round here, deciduous woodland is higher when it comes up, but it's like rocking horse poo round here, most seems to be owned by large estates. I've been planting for the last 4 yrs, my first coppice cut is 3 yrs away.

Funky have you looked at adjusting your thermostat down a bit, turning off rads you don't really need on, and checked your level of insulation?

Going wood for whole house heating is a major installation. You could get a good idea of the costs by measuring your rooms and going into a decent log burner showroom armed with the numbers, this would give you the size of appliance you'd need, you'd also need a hot water tank, a cold WT, and a header tank for the gravity circuit, might be able to use your current rads, but they'd be best re-piped if the system is currently piped in microbore, there'd be a lot of plumbing to do anyway. If you have a S facing roof consider solar HW for the summer to go with the woodburner, or you end up on an electric emersion heater for HW in summer, which is very expensive. If you want to keep the combi as back-up heating it involves more cost (and a bit of a plumbing headache) to fit an equalizer (basically a big manifold goes near the HW tank).

Ideally you'd have a woodstore the size of a double garage too!

A Herald Hunter with a wrap around boiler is 26KW, that's around the min size woodburner I think you'd need off the top of my head, but you really need to do the room volume numbers to get an accurate idea.
 
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Basically what I'm looking at is being less reliant on the gas. So a burner in the living room and leaving the door open to take the chill out of the house rather than having the central heating on 24/7.

When I'm on shifts I'm happy with a camp bed in front of the burner during the day when everyone is out of the house.

I'm not expecting miracles but every little helps.
 
Nigel-S said:
Mine was worth every penny, I've had it a couple of years and it's brilliant. I bought it direct from the company in Canada that makes them (has made them for many years). Not sure about the one's on ebay, if they're from the same place they should be ok.
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right, might give one a go. only issue atm is i have a canopy top with a tiny flat surface. i'll see what i can rig up.
 
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