A Quick Look At Installing A Wood Burner
Wood burning stoves not only look and feel lovely in any home, but can also save quite a bit on fuel bills. Which no doubt helps to explain the large number of people who have installed them in recent years. But it’s not quite as simple as picking one out from a catalog.
The first obstacle you are likely to encounter is a wall of regulations concerning air pollution. These vary regionally but if you are within a designated smoke control zone then it may be the end of the project before you even begin.
So long before you even get to physically installing a wood stove there is a significant amount of tedious preparation required. You should also check with your household insurer that they will maintain cover (they may otherwise refuse a claim, especially for fire damage!).
The physical installation of a wood burner is best left to a qualified specialist installer. Tempting though it may be to “save” some money by tackling the job yourself, it really is a false economy that is almost certain to cost you far more down the line.
Additionally, if one of your requirements is to add a boiler to your wood burning stove in order to run central heating radiators and provide hot water then specialist training and tools will be needed. In many cases you will soon discover that a “heat accumulator” is the best way to store and distribute heat from a wood burning system, and again this is a specialist field.
At the end of the day though, if you are prepared to deal with the initial bureaucracy and understand the value of paying for the services of registered professional then installing a wood burning stove in your own home is not an overwhelming task by any means. Just resist the temptation to cut corners on the budget.
