When we moved into our new house, the thing we were most intent on adding was a proper wood burning stove. We had a log burner or fireplace in most of our previous house; I get cold easily, and since warmth is one of Maslow’s fundamental needs I like to be able to provide it.
I believe in burning wood as a sustainable and renewable fuel; it can be carbon neutral and it is very low tech, which makes it a good step towards self-sufficiency.
The house came with this “delightful” gas fire:
I removed this with help from my son, and managed to get a fair price for on ebay. We also removed the block-work around the fire to make the wall flat.
The gas fire out, the next step was to fit the stove and install a twin wall flue.
For the stove we chose a Clearview Solution 500. As we live in a smoke control area, our choice of stove was limited to the list of DEFRA approved stoves but I think we’d have chosen this stove even if we weren’t in a smoke control area.
For our flue installation we worked with Dean at Warm Knights; he did a really great job, as the photos testify!
The finished result:
The stove outputs 8kW, which is on the large side, but the convection casing and the eco fan means that the heat is distributed nicely around the house. We don’t need to use our central heating at all any more.
The flue has an excellent draw, so it is easy to light a fire, and quickly gets hot. The stove is very easy to control with independent up-draft and down-draft controls. This is a really nice change from previous stoves we have had, which have been hard to light and impossible to control.
tl;dr: get one.
scruffian 