Carbon Zero Houses

Projects: Haven

Wood Burner Installation

Originally the house was heated using a combination of Economy 7 storage heaters and two small open fires. These were situated almost back-to-back, one in the kitchen and one in the sitting room. They shared two flues up a common chimney. It was decided to seal and remove the kitchen fire while extending the opening of the sitting room fire.

Since the log burning fire is the primary source of heat from November to March it has to have the capacity to heat all the property and provide sufficient hot water to meet all requirements. A log burner with a wrap round boiler was chosen as it had a 4500 btu output. The opening had to be sufficient to meet safety standards (minimum being 300 mm above, 150 mm side and back). Since the heart of the heating system is the Thermal Store, and because this was located in the loft space, the extra flue from the kitchen fire could be used as a pipe run for the water system.

Click the images to enlarge.

  

  

Once the fireplace gap has been created the log burning stove and other parts where delivered. At this point it was decided that the flexi tube (see photo below) would be slightly too large for the lower part of the chimney. Therefore a new opening was created above the fireplace to enlarge the chimney (see photo). The whole log burning system involves a stove with two 45° black vitreous elbows that the adapter then joins to the flexi tube which runs up the chimney. The flexi tube is capped with the chimney cap (see photo).

  

As this Wood Burning Stove is the primary source of winter heat its back boiler needs to be plumbed into the thermal store. The Thermal Store for the Haven Project has been located in the existing loft for both space purposes and due to fact that gravity will be used to assist water flows. See the Thermal Store Installation for more details. The second chimney which was original used for the kitchen fire was utilised to run the copper pipe for the heating system (see photo below). Once connected into the thermal store it takes about 30 minutes to raise the temperature of the thermal store from 15 °C to 30 °C, which is sufficient to run the central heating system.