www.woodstovewarehouse.co.uk

Wood is a renewable fuel, and encouraged by this Government.   Other countries in Europe do better, but here we have a reduced rate of 5% VAT on wood boilers over 7Kw, their installation and the installation of solar panels. Will we cut down all the trees? No, especially not in Kent and Sussex where we have abundant coppice woods. These need to be cut down/cropped every 12-16 years or the ecosystem at the base of the forest, wood anemones, bluebells, violets, etc die off. The current value to the cutter (so the woodland owner only gets a cut of this) is about £16.00 per tonne, which is a very low return on a land investment. A small house on wood heating alone would use about 7 tonnes a year so at 70 tonnes per acre, about 1.5 acres per household is required. Outside the large conurbations of London etc. we could be carbon neutral with our heating (four fifths of our energy goes on heating, the remainder on electricity for lighting, controls, music etc etc.)

 The problems that arise are;-

1/         The secret of efficient wood burning is dry wood. This means you must store your wood properly and plan ahead.  A proper wood store of about 10 cu/meters volume is required, half of which is handily near the point of use and dry.

2/         To burn wood properly you need a combustion chamber temperature of around 4-500 deg.C. This is impossible to achieve if you just stick a saddle tank around the combustion chamber. Few stoves burn properly with water boilers; the ESSE wood cooker and the Esse 700b stove are probably the best on the market.

3/         The calorific value of wood is low so you have to keep feeding it to get the output, which is not easy if you leave early for work and arrive home late.

4/         You need to do some work lugging and storing wood, couch potatoes and those who think their nails are more important than the planet, read no further.  They say wood warms you three times – when you cut it down, when you cut it up and when you burn it.  

5/         The house get very cold when you go away on holiday, for weekends, or if you are ill in the winter.

All these problems can be solved though; the technical and installation one by using a combined system of wood and oil or gas and, to really reduce your carbon foot print to its minimum, solar thermal panels. With this system, all the boilers feed a common heat storage cylinder and water and heating are used as required. If you do not light the wood boiler, the oil or gas boiler will automatically come on and compensates the system without you having to interfere. In simple terms the more you light the wood boiler and the more the sun shines, the more carbon you will save. With added solar panels on the roof up to 75% reduction can be achieved for just a little thought and effort on your part.

Following is diagram of the layout for up to a three or four bedroom house.  COSI can supply all the parts in kit form for you to install with a plumber, or provide a full installation service in the SE. Please phone for advice for larger properties.

Diagram of system layout for combining wood, oil or gas and thermal solar panels using thermal store cylinder.