wood pellet boilers
wood pellet boilers
with the price of heating oil going through the roof & out of my budget im thinking of getting a wood granule central heating boiler... does anyone have any experience of them?? id like to get a ground source heat pump but they are well out of my budget...any advice will be apreciated...
Re: wood pellet boilers
We have a wood stove with a back boiler as well as oil central heating. They work quite well together. When we light the fire the oil cuts out but keeps the pump running. When the fire gets low the oil kicks back in.
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Re: wood pellet boilers
im trying to do away with oil as its getting too expensive but id be interested on what output & the size of you house for a comparison.
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Martin Evans
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Re: wood pellet boilers
I am told that wood smoke is more aggressive to chimneys. Any plumbers on here to confirm or deny 
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suffolkpete
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Re: wood pellet boilers
Wood certainly leaves tar deposits that can leach through the brickwork if the flue isn't lined, but perhaps if the wood is processed in the form of pellets it is of better quality. My concern would be that wood has a relatively low calorific value relative to its volume so that you need a large storage space and are constantly feeding the boiler if it's providing your sole source of heating. Round here, a lot of people are switching to wood burners, though not of the pellet variety, as an alternative to oil and this has pushed prices up. I would recommend that you look very carefully at the amount of wood you require, and the price. The saving may be less than you think if you have to pay for the fuel.
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tractorman
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Re: wood pellet boilers
^^^WHS
Coincidentally, two friends have put wood burners in in the last three or four years. The first has oil-fired heating (he's the heating "engineer"!) and has been buying logs from a lad nearby. He reckons it's cheaper than oil, but there again, they also run a holiday let from their oil tank, so I doubt there's as much difference in oil use as he reckons!
The other friend, a retired farmer, had to change his old fashioned fire/oven affair (I hate to call it a range!) and only uses coal as wood is too expensive to buy! He reckons he's using a lot less coal than the old fire used - but his kitchen is now warm in winter; something it never was in the fifty years I've known him!
I think we are stuck with an oil-fired Rayburn and a 2KW convector heater as I daren't have anything with naked flame - dear old Ma was lifting logs off the fire and putting them on the hearth when she got too hot!!
Coincidentally, two friends have put wood burners in in the last three or four years. The first has oil-fired heating (he's the heating "engineer"!) and has been buying logs from a lad nearby. He reckons it's cheaper than oil, but there again, they also run a holiday let from their oil tank, so I doubt there's as much difference in oil use as he reckons!
The other friend, a retired farmer, had to change his old fashioned fire/oven affair (I hate to call it a range!) and only uses coal as wood is too expensive to buy! He reckons he's using a lot less coal than the old fire used - but his kitchen is now warm in winter; something it never was in the fifty years I've known him!
I think we are stuck with an oil-fired Rayburn and a 2KW convector heater as I daren't have anything with naked flame - dear old Ma was lifting logs off the fire and putting them on the hearth when she got too hot!!
Re: wood pellet boilers
We have a Dunsley Yorkshire multi-fuel stove. It has some sort of afterburner device that means it is smokeless zone exempt and comes with a certificate that gets you off the hook if caught burning coal or wood. Hooray!
There is not much gap between the top fire brick and the flue outlet. When burning stuff like conifers this causes a problem as the sugars in the wood cause a lot of soot to line the chimney/liner. This falls back down into a little pile at the bottom, effectively blocking the flue. We now just mix in the old conifers we chopped down in small amounts.
A flue liner is recomended in any chimney more than about 60 years old, especially if your fireplace is back to back with the house next door and they only have a gas fire. Your flue will be much hotter than theirs, cracks will occur and you will give your neighbors carbon monoxide poisoning - this has happened on several occassions, so invest a couple of hundred quid in a stainless liner that will probably last 40 years or more.
Our stove has a back boiler that warms a tank of hot water, 3 upstairs radiators and a heated towel rail. We go for low-tech, with no other central heating system or timers. That way we can run a suck through pump set-up that eliminates the need for a non return valve and allows passive heating up of the radiators.
Running a multi-fuel is well worth the extra cost on top of the price of a wood burn only stove.
It was a great way to learn plumbing I can tell you......
There is not much gap between the top fire brick and the flue outlet. When burning stuff like conifers this causes a problem as the sugars in the wood cause a lot of soot to line the chimney/liner. This falls back down into a little pile at the bottom, effectively blocking the flue. We now just mix in the old conifers we chopped down in small amounts.
A flue liner is recomended in any chimney more than about 60 years old, especially if your fireplace is back to back with the house next door and they only have a gas fire. Your flue will be much hotter than theirs, cracks will occur and you will give your neighbors carbon monoxide poisoning - this has happened on several occassions, so invest a couple of hundred quid in a stainless liner that will probably last 40 years or more.
Our stove has a back boiler that warms a tank of hot water, 3 upstairs radiators and a heated towel rail. We go for low-tech, with no other central heating system or timers. That way we can run a suck through pump set-up that eliminates the need for a non return valve and allows passive heating up of the radiators.
Running a multi-fuel is well worth the extra cost on top of the price of a wood burn only stove.
It was a great way to learn plumbing I can tell you......
Re: wood pellet boilers
thanks chaps! weve got a guy visiting next week to give us a quote for a heat pump... a fridge in reverse is the best description 
i like your advice.. we burn a lot of oak & walnut etc which has been well seasoned at the moment. i cant afford to run the oil fired boiler, thankfully the winter hasnt been too harsh! i have burned around 6m3 of wood & 750 litres of oil..
i like your advice.. we burn a lot of oak & walnut etc which has been well seasoned at the moment. i cant afford to run the oil fired boiler, thankfully the winter hasnt been too harsh! i have burned around 6m3 of wood & 750 litres of oil..