Our Personal Experience of Living with a Wood Burning Stove
This Guide and Analysis is for anyone looking to purchase a wood burning stove. My views are totally independent and give a balanced opinion of the realities based on personal experience. It’s the kind of information that manufacturers and suppliers don’t focus on.
If you are thinking about buying a wood burner or multi fuel stove then this is worth a read.
We’ve been runing a stove now for over 2 years. From our experience, I’ve reviewed and analysed the choice we made to Live with a Wood Burning Stove.
I’ve tried to answer the question. Is Living with a Wood Burning Stove worth it?
Looking at the money side, the environment aspects and the lifestyle change in some detail leads me to answer “YES it’s worth it”.
Have a read through and see if you agree with my conclusions. Please leave me any comments, suggestions or queries.
<< Read - Wood Burning Stove – Is it Worth it?>> Includes my wood burning stove running costs.
And.. Feel free to link to the article if you think others out there may find it interesting.
Thanks,
Andy
Wood burning stoves have some big plus points, they are carbon neutral, will still work during power cuts and of course they look great. Not as easy or clean as a modern gas boiler, but to be honest they dont take a huge amount of work to operate. It encourages you to reduce the amount of fuel you use as well – sometimes its easier to put a jumper on than light the fire.
There is a bit of a technique to getting them burning just right, but its not too hard to master. Getting the right logs is essential, nicely seasoned logs will burn better without too much smoke.
Hi Andy,
I’ve spent the last half-hours reading through all this and I just wanted to say thank you for providing such an excellent (FREE TO READ!) resource on this subject!
I know where to look now should I ever decide to go down this route and I also know where to direct family and friends for all the relevant information.
You’re dead right though – draft-proofing and insulating is essential before making any such change.
Have a good Christmas and all the best for the New Year!
Olly.
Thanks Olly, I hope it prove to useful.
ALC, Good Points
Hi Andy,
Do you plan on doing an article on affordable draft-proofing for homes? It’s something we’re thinking about as I keep tripping over the towels my mum’s placing at the bottom of the doors!!
It would definitely be interesting and would fit in with your advice on wood burning stoves.
Olly.
Olly, Good suggestion, I’ve written up the draught proofing on our front door. Could give you some ideas to get rid of the towels < on the cheap door draughtproofing>
Hi Andy,
Just read your page on Draught Proofing (sorry, I couldn’t see a link for adding comments there?). I really like your cheap solution, which remains hidden while the door is closed.
Only issue I can imagine (where you groove the door) is that, if the door swells in width during wet weather, it would be a right bugger trying to plane the edges down… (Unless you own a rebate plane!) Did you glue the strip in place? Could it be screwed in for easier removal or adjustment?
I’ll definitely have to give that a try, some time. Do you think it would work as-well on an outward-opening exterior door?
Our back door is only single-glazed, which also lets a lot of cold air through. Do you know if there’s anything that can be fitted to the inside of the glazing to reduce these draughts?
(One day, I will get around to making an oak door to replace it…)
Olly.
Hi Olly, No appolgies required, my fault for not putting the link in.
I’ve transfered your comments over to here
Cheers Andy
I’ve just read through your sash window blog and am now waiting for details of the detailed plans in whatever form they may take. Please add me to the list of interested peeps.
Thanks Roger,
I’ve got to start cracking on with with it. I’ll be in touch when Iv’e made some progress.
Cheers Andy