wood burning stove

[Julie]

HI

I am thinking of buying a wood burnering fire, any one like to give thier opion on them

cheers

[pdellis]

We have both a stove and dual action AC. Never used the AC as we find the stove is more than adequate for heating our open-plan lounge/diner/kitchen.

You will use a fair amount of wood if you keep the vents open once it is up & running (we close the vents to slow the burning process & get through less than a small basket of logs per night). Having said that however, our house is quite 'long' so we do have small gas burners for the end rooms

If you are going to buy one, invest in a cast iron stove and make sure it has a heat deflector plate otherwise you will lose most of your heat straight up the flue

Paul

[country boy]

Cast Iron is definately a good option as the latent heat produced is more effective, it is more expensive tho'. I'm a great fan of Jotul products, but they are the top end of the market.

[caroig]

I purchased a cast iron stove from a Ferreteria wholesaler for 350€ and it does a surprisingly good job.

[melandsharon]

We have been looking for them to heat our lounge they range from 250 upwards, we intend to fit three in total one in the lounge one in our gallery room and another in a smaller area.
Any information on a cut price place would be gratefully received
Thanks

[Grouser]

Ferreterias are the cheapest place to buy them in my experience and, as I have posted before, the summertime is the best time to buy them from the point of view of price, as you will get offers on old stock and discontinued models.

[Alan-LaCala]

We inherited a wood burner when we bought the house and before we moved in I was disappointed as I wanted an open fireplace.

I am now glad we have the wood burner, and not the open fire.

With a wood burner you can leave it on and take the dog for a walk, or pop out to a restaurant to eat, and not worry about sparks. Friends who have an open fire cannot do that, and have to douse the fire before going to bed.

We also have hot and cold air con. Invaluable in the summer (for me) and handy at this time of year for first thing in the morning when no one can be bothered to light a fire.

Alan

[Julie]

Thanks for the replies, I will nip over to Oldam and take a look, get some advice, as I am in the UK at the moment and it is only half an hour from here.
Is it necessary to buy 3 for your house, can you not run the pipes to get the heat for the other room, although i guess that could be quite ugly some times.
Now I just need to find the best wood to burn.
I will wait until summer to buy one or at least until they are not in use, good tip the waiting, as i am sure i have seen them on offer myself in the past

thanks

[Grouser]

You can run the pipe through more than one room though you will be limited by the number of bends. After the pipe goes up from the stove there should be no more than two. If these are right angle bends be sure to slope them up slightly so that any creosote forming will run down rather than making a pool in the pipe. Also a run of pipe that is uninsulated should not be overlong.

[melandsharon]

No we need three as the house is in many sections the pipes are going to be used to heat other places but we think three should cover it.

why buy them in the UK are they cheaper ?

[Shukran]

My opinion is - no thank you. We had one in our first rented cortijo and we wouldn't go through all that pain and suffering again and they're so UGLY. We also have one where we're renting now and it remains untouched - it's like a blot on the landscape, great black thing which takes up far too much room in the lounge. When I want/need heat I prefer it instantly, flick of a switch jobby. No, can't beat central heating I'm afraid, it's cleaner, cheaper, does the whole house instead of burning one leg whilst the other leg remains cold, and it has an on-off switch! I can't imagine anybody wanting to go back to pre-central heating days, going from warm to cold rooms, remembering to close the doors behind you to keep the warmth in - brrrr - I did that when I was a young girl and the painful memories still remain with me.

[toddcl]

Log burners are great and once you get the heat going we find we only have to make it up twice a day [morning and evening] a good fill with the damper closed will take about 12 hours to burn through.

We were that impressed we brought another one for a large room under the garage. We brought it in the summer as they are so cheap out of season.

Get your wood in stock as early as possible to ensure it's dried out or you will get so much tar it will leach through the joints of your stack.

[Trooperman]

Whether they´re ugly or not is, as said by Shukran, a matter of opinion. It remains, in my opinion, a reflection of the culture that we´ve either embraced or decided to modify according to our northern european ideas of comfort, as to whether we have a wood burner or not. We have a traditional country house and thus opted for an equally traditional country stove (made by the Spanish company "Hergom") that is cast iron, is lined with fire-bricks and will burn coal/coke as well as wood. The only trouble is that we don´t seem to get coal down here in the south, so we are restricted to wood - and all it´s combustible variations. We bought it from Leroy Merlin who had, in their autumn heating brochure, a useful table of calculations to work out the size of stove needed for a given volume of room space. Although how one can calculate the output of a stove without some knowledge of what it´s going to burn, is beyond me.

The cost of wood, even ´though we live on the edge of the cork forest of Alcornocales, is muy caro, as are all forms of energy in Spain, so it seems. It is particularly painful on the pocket if one lives in a thermally inefficient traditional house as we do. On reflection, central heating, done during the "reformation" might have given a better effect at a similar cost - can´t answer that precisely as there are so many variables to take into account in the calculations. Insulation of the house might have, as I suspect is true in our case, a significant effect on cost.

Don´t forget there are "inserts" to consider - built-in woodburners - and not just the free-standing ones, and these "inserts" are probably more effective as the warm air surrounding the stove and otherwise trapped inside the chimney space (and eventually dissipated) is exhausted via trunking and electric fans to other parts of the room or, indeed, other rooms.

Now, as my wife never stops reminding me, a curtain across the door will also stop all those country draughts! Seems like a trip to the fabric stalls at La Linea markert is due soon.

[Julie]

Hi

Not buying in UK, just going to go and take a look and have a chat about them, thanks for all the info

[toddcl]

Finding a supplier of fuel at the right price seems to be a universal problem in Spain.

However as you settle in, you tend to find the cheapest suppliers and even sometimes free fuel. It's only those that are new or leave it until winter that seem have problems.

In my opinion there is nothing more rewarding than coming into a room that has that warmth that only a log burning stove can give, with that faint scent of creosote / tar in the air.

A full wood store and a warm hearth is next to heaven.
Then I biased having always had solid fuel, open fires and stoves all my life.

[Grouser]

Melandsharon, three seems a bit over the top. Wouldn't you be better buying one with a back boiler and piping in some radiators?

[melandsharon]

The house is over 390 square meters and is split into four separate areas. we have thought of lots of options, but the boiler system is complex for the lay out of the place. so it makes more sense to have the separate heat sources
Thanks
Sharon

[Pigeon Tim]

I have an open fire place as well as hot/cold AC.

As the fireplace is pretty big it takes a lot of wood to get a good heat from it and I usually have the A/C on flat out at 30°C if it's really cold outside (ie below 8°C).

The only problem with this is that when you go upstairs there is sometimes a strong smell of smoke in the rooms. I'm not quite sure how the fire smoke is getting into the A/C system but it does. Perhaps it's the wood I'm using or maybe the chimney needs a sweep?

If I were to install a wood burning stove how much extra heat would it give off compared to the open fire I have now?

Also, I need to some draught excluders for the front door frames as the wind whistles in when the fire is roaring, anyone know what the Spanish phrase is for them?

[olive]

Has anyone got a log burner with a back boiler and a few radiators? If so where did you get it from?

On the same vein, has anyone got a simple and cost effective gas boiler and a few radiators set up, i.e not thousands of euros?. Does it work well or do you have to keep changing the bottle every five minutes!?

I'm with Trooperman but when it gets really cold some extra heating in rooms not really heated by a log burner would be handy especially for visitors from the UK who seem totally unable to adapt from going from a room at 23 deg C to another at 3 Deg C!

olive

[Trooperman]

Olive, there is (or was) a gas fire with a balanced flue - obviously to be fitted on an outside wall and with the option of having the unsightly gas bottle put outside - available from Repsol dealers. It costs (and Oh! Boy! doesn´t anything like this cost in Spain) around 600 Euros to be fitted but that, in our case, augments the quite effective log burning stove that provides heat in the living area. We have two such gas fires (one in each bedroom) and they are safe to use at all times. Consumption is anyone´s guess as it depends upon how cold you are/it is and how big the room is, but it´s similar to the mobile gas heaters and visually a lot less unsightly.

[sueb]

hi
we have an old traditional house that we renovated when it came to heating the house we took advice from a plummer who suggested central heating using gas/oil so we now have a very unsightly tank in the stable with the largest boiler i have ever seen, it is like a tardis, really and in the two years we have had it it has worked successfully on only a handful of occassions and the plummer is fed up with coming out to fix it and is now never at home!! how i wish we had spent 350euros instead of 3000 and got ourselves a wood burning stove.

[Trooperman]

A bit more than 300 Euros, sueb, but I understand where you are coming from.

[Babby]

A friend of ours have a wood burner and haven´t had to use it yet - they bought a few electric panel heaters (look like a slim radiator) - they cost 90 euros fitted and running cost is 5 cents per hour. Their house is lovely and warm and they don´t have the bother of going out in the cold to get the logs, the mess, the cleaning etc. It is worth considering. They are very much in demand at the moment and seem to be selling really well.

[Bongtrees]

hi
y and in the two years we have had it it has worked successfully on only a handful of occassions and the plummer is fed up with coming out to fix it and is now never at home!! how i wish we had spent 350euros instead of 3000 and got ourselves a wood burning stove.

Its unusual for the plumber to service a boiler in Spain, they are usually not qualified plus boiler should have been dealt with under warranty so the manufacturer arranges all of this.

from my own experience only technicos from the manufacturing company have ever come to sort out any problems and also to service it.

[Shukran]

...they bought a few electric panel heaters (look like a slim radiator) - they cost 90 euros fitted and running cost is 5 cents a minute. Their house is lovely and warm and they don´t have the bother of going out in the cold to get the logs, the mess, the cleaning etc. It is worth considering. They are very much in demand at the moment and seem to be selling really well.

That's what we're going for. A friend has just had them installed (special offer of buy five get one free) and he's just waiting for his electricity bill to confirm that it is about 5 cents per hour).

[Babby]

No need to wait for elec bill, you can calculate it yourself. 500 watts an hour consumption. 1000 watts costs about 8 cents plus VAT.

[Ursula]

I have heard they recommend keeping them plugged in 24 hours. So each radiator would cost 36 euros a month to run. The bigger size consumes 500 watts, there is a smaller size which consumes less. Not bad considering a lorry load of wood is between 200 and 300 euros a go.

[Shukran]

No need to wait for elec bill...

They did their sums before purchasing them but they would still prefer to see it for themselves in black and white. They use off-peak electricity and the whole house is a joy to be in.

[Ursula]

So easy to switch over to night rate electricity too - just go to Marpemac (there is one in Eroski centre in Antequera) and they will arrange for it to be done. Costs 9 euros I think for the admin. Night time elec is half price.

[toddcl]

Saw these flat panel heaters advertised in Spain at 90€ and when I got back to UK found them in B&Q for £27 Each. Took 3 to Spain and they work a treat.

450 Watts per panel. They don't run constantly as they have thermostatic control that keeps cutting out the power once the panel reaches a certain temperature and cuts back in again as they cool down.