Anyone with a woodburner??

[tina3747]

Can you tell me the pros and cons of it please.

We've just took on a huge project of a house and I'm thinking of having one installed. I need to make the decision ASAP as the chimney wall needs to be either left as it is in the architect plans or taken out.
The pros I see are the cosy ness of it and I thought it would be cheap to run and heat the whole house in the process, the more I read about them it seems that the wood is expensive to buy and a nightmare to clean...

Anyone shed any light on them please??

 

[Lauraxamy]

I have an open fire and a wood burner, my grandparents and my parents also have a wood burner.
I have a love/hate relationship with both my fires. Can be a pain in the bum to light, coming home when it's dark and cold and having to go outside, get logs, coal and faff about trying to light it (I'm bloody crap at lighting fires, need a man ), it's also messy, hate cleaning out the soot and when the chimney sweep comes once a year it leaves a dust everywhere.
I love it though because the heat that comes off it is brill, it's so warm and cosy in the winter to just sit by the fire. Love my nights by the fire with a hot chocolate, candles lit, etc and I think I'd really miss having an open fire or woodburner if I moved some where else.
I also like it because it saves me on putting my oil central heating on which costs me enough already! I don't find the wood and coal to be expensive, in fact now is the time to buy it, a lot of coal yards have offers on bags on coal and a lot of people sell off wood cheaper this time of year. I always stock up from June-September.

 

[tina3747]

I have an open fire and a wood burner, my grandparents and my parents also have a wood burner.
I have a love/hate relationship with both my fires. Can be a pain in the bum to light, coming home when it's dark and cold and having to go outside, get logs, coal and faff about trying to light it (I'm bloody crap at lighting fires, need a man ), it's also messy, hate cleaning out the soot and when the chimney sweep comes once a year it leaves a dust everywhere.
I love it though because the heat that comes off it is brill, it's so warm and cosy in the winter to just sit by the fire. Love my nights by the fire with a hot chocolate, candles lit, etc and I think I'd really miss having an open fire or woodburner if I moved some where else.
I also like it because it saves me on putting my oil central heating on which costs me enough already! I don't find the wood and coal to be expensive, in fact now is the time to buy it, a lot of coal yards have offers on bags on coal and a lot of people sell off wood cheaper this time of year. I always stock up from June-September.

Is the wood burner as messy though? I'm guessing the majority is contained compared to an open fire ? Would you say it heats the house enough or do you need central heating on too?

 

[supertabby]

You still have to clean it out - my in laws have a woodburner, we have an open fire. The cleaning is fairly similar really. If you have a deep tray you can get a couple of fire without having to empty out. If you use it regularly you'd get adept at sweeping out quickly. I don't really find ours that bad to clean up.

Strictly speaking you should get a chimney swept once a year if coal, twice a year if wood. Lauraxamy, try a different chimney sweep, ours cleans up everything behind her.

We don't use ours as a main heating system (neither do in laws). We tend to do a fire once a week maybe in winter, it does warm up our living room, hall and bedroom above, and we adjust the central heating. It doesn't warm the whole house though - not enough to use instead of central heating imo. I love having a fire on though, it feels like a real treat, lovely and cosy.

Not sure on wood cost as we mainly use coal. We had a load of trees chopped down in our garden in winter and chopped up for us (we didn't want the trees, the logs were an added bonus) but you need to leave it to dry around a year before using. Wet logs obviously don't burn properly and can damage your chimney, even cause safety problems apparently but I can't remember why. Wood sparks more than coal but as a wood burner has doors this is less of issue than an open fire - though when starting up the fire it's helpful to leave doors open till it gets going.

 

[HBGirl]

I have one of these. www.earthfire.co.za/Earthfire Ceramic Fireplace.htm

The stainless steel flue never needs cleaning and it warms the whole house. It is messy though.

 

[dani_tinks]

We love ours. It gets swept a few times a year, but the man never leaves a mess, infact it's spotless after he's been!
Ours doesn't heat the whole house, but we have a huge room (that it's in) with a very high ceiling.
It's easy enough to light once you know what you're doing. We keep enough wood in a wood basket next to it so we don't have to go out in the night to get more.
You have to empty the ashes in the tray, but once you get into the habbit of doing that it isn't really a problem. I keep a dust pan and brush by the log basket to sweep up any dust etc. It looks great and is so comforting in the winter. We keep ours going for most of it!

Edit - Just a quick con. We were supplied with logs that were too damp to burn which caused a small chimney fire. We didn't realise the logs were too damp to use so we only buy kiln dried logs for it now.

 

[Eternal]

Love ours, obviously you have to empty it of ash every time and then we Hoover it out (with hubby's work industrial Hoover) fairly regularly, but I love it.

 

[Lauraxamy]

I have an open fire and a wood burner, my grandparents and my parents also have a wood burner.
I have a love/hate relationship with both my fires. Can be a pain in the bum to light, coming home when it's dark and cold and having to go outside, get logs, coal and faff about trying to light it (I'm bloody crap at lighting fires, need a man ), it's also messy, hate cleaning out the soot and when the chimney sweep comes once a year it leaves a dust everywhere.
I love it though because the heat that comes off it is brill, it's so warm and cosy in the winter to just sit by the fire. Love my nights by the fire with a hot chocolate, candles lit, etc and I think I'd really miss having an open fire or woodburner if I moved some where else.
I also like it because it saves me on putting my oil central heating on which costs me enough already! I don't find the wood and coal to be expensive, in fact now is the time to buy it, a lot of coal yards have offers on bags on coal and a lot of people sell off wood cheaper this time of year. I always stock up from June-September.

Is the wood burner as messy though? I'm guessing the majority is contained compared to an open fire ? Would you say it heats the house enough or do you need central heating on too?

Still quite messy because obviously you have to clean it out but once I've emptied the ashes out I use an old hoover and then an old mop to mop the bottom of the fireplace.
As for it heating the whole house, my woodburner is in my dining room which is the 'middle room' which also has the stairs in, I live in a cottage so my all the rooms in my house are average size, not huge, so it can heat a lot of the house, the only part it doesn't heat is the kitchen because that's one of the bigger rooms and at the far end of my house but when it's really cold I do have to have the central heating on for the upstairs. My open fire is in the front room and I don't find that to heat much else of the house to be honest.