Wood burning stove fans.

I was wondering if anybody has these types of fans? We had a new wood burning stove installed in an old Georgian stone fireplace last May so only just started using it, we already have another 1 which sits effectively in the room it is for so all the heat produced is circulating where needed. While the new burner gives off huge amounts of heat the installer has positioned the stove back into the fireplace so I then query that a lot of heat is being used to warm the outside wall to the house! There is a metal register plate fitted to reduce the amount of heat going up the lum but still wondered if these fans which run from the heat of the burners (ie no batteries or electricity needed) are any good? Only a mini fans/twin would fit as the distance from the top of the stove to the register plate is small so can't have a decent sized fan. The fans range in price but to buy a twin mini fan is about £60, not worth it if they don't really do the job of pushing warm air out into the room. There seem to be mixed reviews when I looked on line. Some think they are good others a waste of time and money so not very helpful when trying to make my mind up!

 

A GC member has posted about these, but I can't find their post.

P.S. Before I opted for an inset stove, I came across reviews from several people who didn't get as much heat as expected from them, believing they were heating the chimney void rather than the room, so before mine was installed, after taking out the old fire back and before fixing the new hearth and stove surround, I reduced the opening around and corbelled over the new stove location with 215mm thick blockwork to within a finger's thickness (just enough to waggle the stove into position and fit the flue) and didn't incur any heat loss problems. The flue installer had previously mentioned the possibility of packing above the stove with vermiculite, but I avoided any necessity for that with accurately cut blockwork infilling.

Isn't that for fire/debris/other prevention, rather than heat loss prevention? 1.5mm thick steel plate is hardly a substitute for 215mm blockwork. If 1.5mm steel provided insulation against heat loss, you wouldn't get any heat out of a steel wood burning stove.

 

Oh you could well be right @Scrungee I just presumed..no doubt wrongly, that it filled a large hole. The chimney had 5 separate pots so it is quite substantial and equally created substantial gales when it was just an open fire which has improved greatly since the burner and plate were installed. I was surprised that the burner was installed as far back into the recess as it was, unfortunately I was out when it was installed so didn't query it at the time. It looks very nice but judging by the other burner we have which is totally in a room and not recessed into a fireplace I do think we are loosing a bit of heat. It's a big stove which has a maximum capacity of about 13 kw so despite maybe being not totally efficient it heats a large part of the house. It's just the amount of logs we are going through which is not quite so good. It takes daughter and I a lot of time and effort to chainsaw and the split the wood and the less we use the better as far as I am concerned

 

Have a read of this Register plate or closure plate. What is the difference and do I care?

So do you have a register plate or a closure plate and do you have a flue above whatever it is?

Plus google "insulation above register plate". Would that make a difference?

There should be 5 separate flues within that chimney, unless the parging and dividing brickwork has failed, but if that has happened you may have noticed combustion smells about the house.


P.S. Our daughter back home from uni is whingeing about the temperature in our house, whilst sitting on the sofa next to our stove where it's been between 20 to 22 deg C on the far side of the room! After she goes back we'll return to our toasty 16 deg C and burn a fraction of the wood we've been getting through whilst she's been back.

 

I have a couple of these. I hang one just above the gas heater in my greenhouse because there is no place to sit it and it does move air quite well. They are so quiet because they do run without power. I paid $90 for my larger one and felt it was worth the money. However I am just pushing air around a small area.

 

Thanks @Scrungee. it's a closure plate we have and a copex liner. Yes understand a bit about old chimneys (did a total restoration of a Geogian coach house years ago and learnt A LOT about stone buildings!There is a bridge (that's what we call them) which has been breached on one of the flues but it is far up and doesn't cause problems. It's a flue we don't use like the 4 others on this stack. I would not even consider getting it repaired as doubt pretty much there is anybody alive nowadays who have the knowledge of how to fix stone chimneys! Down the road our neighbouring farmer has 2 sets of semi detached stone built cottages. He decided to have the chimneys on 1 set of cottages renewed rather than just repointed, BIG mistake.. The new chimneys now no longer draw properly and they have leaked so badly that 2 internal walls have had to be replastered.....the joys of modern builders!
Visa vie your daughter, I had an occasion when my 2 nieces came to stay when they were teenagers. They seemed to think it was fine to go around the house in tee shirts in March in Scotland, I don't think so.They moaned continually about how cold they were. I asked them if they had the faintest idea how much it cost to heat a house, especially 1 which is old and quite big...they had no idea. So I informed them of a rough cost and asked them how much they would need to earn net of tax to pay the heating bills....clueless. I then produced 4 of my jumpers and gave them 2 each to wear and advised of the costs involved in this solution! Then told them that by not having the house like a furness it enabled me to take our family on holiday abroad at least twice yearly with the savings made. The next time they came to stay they brought big jumpers with them. "He who pays the piper calls the tune".

 

Relatives of Mrs Scrungee living in Scotland used to say "in summer you only need one jumper".

 

Fairly near the truth but depending on whereabouts in Scotland you live ie not up in the Highlands our climate is very similar to Lincolnshire. Trees and plants are a very good indicator of climate I find. We used to regularly go down to Lincolnshire and I found the climate there compared pretty much to here. A friend used to be a head gardener at Belvoir Castle in Grantham Leicestershire. He now lives about 5 miles from me. He told me there was maybe only a couple of weeks difference to when plants started into growth between where he used to live and now. He very much liked he could afford to buy a lovely stone built cottage with big garden for the price he sold a 2 bedroom flat in Grantham! I have Aconites fowering in my garden now and a few Snowdrops, the majority will be flowering any minute, so not sure how that equates to down South.

 

I have an 8kw stove in the lounge. The builder fitted fireboard as a closure plate. I have a fan on top of the stove, although it's difficult to say how much difference it makes to actually pushing the heat out into the room - I can't feel any difference with or without. What I put on it to burn does make a difference to the heat out put. I tried some Ash this winter and it seems to burn ' cold ', that is unless the fire is very hot before adding the Ash it burns slowly and doesn't give much heat. I also tried Birch, which I found very good at throwing out heat and doesn't require the fire to be hot before adding. The Eco Hotlogs are very good too and probably more environmentally friendly. I thought that having the stove would save me money but I still have to run the gas heating as heat from stove doesn't reach the conservatory or our bedroom. I bought the wood online and it cost almost £400 for two crates plus I'm having to buy the Eco Hotlogs locally at £3.99 for bag of 5 as wood has almost all gone, lasted 4 months. Use around 4 bags a week of the hotlogs. And there is the instant light logs I use tostart the fire priced at £1.00 each. They do actually work out as cost effective because they will burn for 1 1/2 - 2 hours before I need to start adding wood, where as kindling and firelighters last around 10- 15 minutes before needing wood. I'm inclined to think that I might just as well run the gas heating all winter as I've spent double what I was expecting.

 

Wow I am really surprised at this @luciusmaximus . Ash is considered by many as the best wood for burning and will even burn quite well "green". Most of the wood we burn is Ash and it burns very very well. We also burn Birch, Holly (prunings) and wild Cherry. Of these I would say that Ash is the best. Maybe the logs you have are very big, if very big they do need a fair amount of heat going before burning well them selves. We split the logs down to about 6 inches in diameter and about 14 to 18 inches long. All the wood we burn has been our own or trees cut down by the council which is given to us if we go and collect it(would go to landfill if we did't take it which would be a dreadful waste). Obviously we have to spend time and a spot of cash chainsawing the wood and splitting it but that probably costs us around £50 PA allowing for chains, sharpening of same, chain oil, fuel for the saw and electricity to run the splitter. Before we had wood burners, we were spending around £3000 on oil for the heating and hot water, we now only spend about £500 for hot water and the odd occasion we need to use the CH.
If we had to buy ready cut and split wood as you have to then perhaps there wouldn't be such a huge saving. I am not getting any younger so not too sure how much longer I can do the lumberjack bit but will keep going as long as I can. I would really hate not to have either an open fire or burner, I've been used to 1 or the other all my life and CH just doesn't get you warmed up quickly if you get really cold.

 

The fans are brilliant but they should be placed where they can pick up the heat and push it forward...

i installed our multi fuel on a slate hearth and place the fan near to the back of the stove for best effect. You of course cannot do that. My suggestion is to get a fan as far forward as is possible. It will still circulate the hot are just not as effectively..

These fans are an absolute must for stove users. There is no device that can help us get the best from our stoves.

Re those blocks that burn for ages they more often than not contain lots of petrochemicals and those can destroy the glass and will do the same to stainless flies if you have them.

Best avoided !!!

We also love our burner !! I get my cord wood free and cut it and split it myself. Any fruit tree wood is great so is ash or best of all Oak when it’s on offer. Ash is superb. The best all round as it’s easy to cut and split and burns slowly producing lots of heat. It’s also plentiful .

I burn home fire ovals with wood on top. The Homefire is very very low in petrochemicals.

We have underfloor heating which has zones. Each zone is controlled by a thermostat so the area of the living room dining room and kitchen gets heated by the stove which of course is aided by the fan. So this 1 third of the bungalow does not require energy only the wood.

These wee fans are not equal. Some work very well some are junk. We use a four blade fan not a three or two blade. Valiant is the brand. There are so many cheap options bit they either are not efficient or don’t work at all...

 

For 30 years I have lived with wood stoves in two different houses. I’m a big fan; we’ll burn every type of wood we can get. Oak and ash are the best by far giving out the most
heat by a Long way. There is an old saying, “ash old or green is fit for a queen.” I agree.
I now live in a barn conversion with high a ceiling . We have a ceiling fan which helps distribute heat. It works but is a little noisy which annoys us. We bought a more expensive one because it was stated that it was quiet but it is still noticeable.

 

I don't see how it can save you any money if you're paying those sort of prices for fuel.

Starting with installation costs, buying a stove from a stove/flue installer will attract a huge premium, I got a quote from Home - StoveBay.com , then got it knocked down to about 60% of what a stove installer/supplier would charge. Then I removed the old fireplace myself, installed my new very expensive hearth and surround (and collected from manufacturers, saving nearly £200 on palleted delivery) and then made good flooring, wall plasterwork, etc. That saved probably a further thousañd pounds.

But even then it would never have been cost justified without us sourcing all of our wood for free, only paying for chainsaw fuel/oil, collecting pallets for kindling, plus buying firelighters when reduced to 10p to 25p per packet. That gets our total heating costs down to approx £100 p.a.

There seems to be too many people treating aquisition of a stove as they would buying a 'classic car', paying loads of money for something that costs a small fortune to run a few times a year, but looks impressive.

 

Agree with much of what you say @Scrungee. We drove down from Fife to Birmingham to get our 2nd stove (1st 1 I got for an absolute steal new off Gumtree from Dundee which is only 1/2 an hours drive away, right place right time) What the hell were we doing driving all the way to Birmingham to get a stove you'd ask. Well it is a big very expensive new stove which was being sold for less than 1/2 price giving a saving of nearly £1000. You can get a lot of fuel for that kind of money and daughter's BF lent us his transit to go down in. Also on the same trip sourced a Georgian style fire surround of the right size near Birmingham for the princely sum of £15. Ok it wasn't made by Robert Adam but it is really quite nice and post a lick of paint c/o me it is very nice in situ.
Yes we got professional installers to demolish the ghastly 1960s brick fireplace and install new burner/liner as it is an old building and I am well past clambering about on roofs with miles of copex liner! We got the burner installed with liner and large slate hearth to comply with regs for just over £600 which wasn't too bad as a metal surround had to be made to fit the original Georgian fireplace which we thought would be in situ but didn't know until the brick monstrosity was removed.
We are very lucky and have our own wood plus that from the council as I mentioned before. Once we have used what we have then there are often adverts on Gumtree for free wood going a begging, mainly pallets which are not the best as processed wood blunts chainsaw chains but you can get chains sharpened for not much money, so would do the job. I nearly died today when going into Lidl, at the entrance they were selling small nets of soft wood for £3.99, daylight robbery, we'd go through about 7 of those in a day no bother. I do think people really need to think before installing burners. If you can't source and then store wood I'm not sure there is a huge saving to be made. Fair enough if you just want something pretty to sit round at Christmas time and use as a 2nd source of heat then that's ok if you don't mind shelling out for a fairly expensive addition to the house.

 

Quite clearly it hasn't been cost effective. When my husband worked for a different company we were able to get most of our wood for free. We also pick up fallen stuff from the forests, including pine cones. Last year was a bad year, my uncle died, Roger's mum died, so we had numerous trips to London and South Wales. My mum had a serious stroke which required her to be hospitalized for two months before being transferred to a residential home. Roger is still having an ongoing battle with his Asthma. We had more building work going in the house and I had a busy summer with orphaned and poorly hedgehogs. Also unexpected bills with cars, the cat and septic tank. I lost several of my pets plus two hedgehogs . Lots of other minor irritations going as well, particularly with the garden and the house, as in trying to get one job at a time completed but having to leave it and start something else . Looking back at 2017 I seem to have spent most of it running about all over the place and driving, lots of driving So, truthfully, sourcing more free wood was very low on my list of priorities. Hence the idea of buying it. I was disappointed that the wood didn't go as far as expected as the company stated one crate would be enough for one winter and it wasn't. I'm hoping for a better and more cost effective year in 2018