Readers Stoves

[dhaslam]

Are you sure you use 30 tons per year?  Thats something like 120,000 Kwh before efficiency losses.

[Mike McMillan]

Yes, I am afraid so, this place was built by Queen Victoria and was not supposed to be lived in, it was her beach looe while swimmimg, hence massive heat loss everywhere... draughts galore, it has a built in natural air circulation through hollow bricks, need I say more? It is built into a clay cliff, so at least the back wall is air tight, but unfortunatly the water seaps in! (hence silver paper in the back ground). It's as near to living at sea without being on it.

[PhatBob]

Here's our efforts:
Opened up the old Baxi coal fireplace that we proved produced zero heat output:

Under the direction of our HEATAS engineer I built a sub-chimney which overcame the myriad difficulties that were presented by the odd shaped fire-place, throat mantle:

Then a 12KW Firebelly FB2 (4KW to room, 8KW to back boiler) :

The hot water from the stove gets dumped into the Mc Donald Engineering 250litre heat store.

Final part of the operation will be to put 2x20 47mm tubes on our South facing roof.