The thread about cost of firewood sparked a question as to whether anyone has a hybrid stove?
Future house has 4 open fireplaces with no lined flues. We will only use the most central, and are wondering whether to go for a single fuel or hybrid stove?
Currently we have a wood stove, as have ready supply of wood and are happily able to chop and stack. But looking to the future we were wondering about changing to a pellet stove? Are these easier for little old people to totter to and fro with tiny quantities of pellets?
And now it seems that there are hybrid stoves. Generally I feel hybrids are often the worst of all worlds as not optimised for anything, but I know nothing about these. In the abstract it seems that a stove that can use compressed wood, granules or wood should be a good thing.
Anyone know whether it is? And whether any hybrid brands have good reputation?
No useful comments here, sorry, but I do wonder if, as you say, it could be the worst of all worlds. Certainly my experience of what used to be called a multifuel stove, in this case solid fuel or wood, was not great.
I’m generally a believer in using a tool that’s designed to do a specific job i.e. get a pellet burner now, if future physical efforts are a concern.
The top level approach would be to get a pellet stove that uses a bulk delivery & storage/silo system so you don’t have to handle 15kg bags at all.
We use 15kg bags that we decant into smaller (roughly 5kg containers) which we line up ready to top up the stove. Lifting a 15kg bag to shoulder height & then be able to accurately tip it onto the stove hopper is a hard job even for the fit & able. Also the decanting process allows you to remove a lot of the smaller particles as these are not recommended inside the stove mechanism,
We bought a pellet stove partly because it seemed likely more manageable to cart bags of pellets around than to have to carry 25kg of logs up the steps to our front door as we get older. A mixed fuel stove seems like a bad idea as suggested, with compromises that will affect efficiency.
Is that a overall house heating stove rather than a 7W type poêle for a living area? We will be changing the house oil boiler to an air source heat pump when funds permit, but do like to have a stove of some sort for ambiance and secondary heat. So not thinking of a huge thing with a hopper.
I’ve been looking at eco-friendly new-build houses/flats in the Black Forest, have visited many in the last 10 days and pellet heating systems are no longer flavour of the month for a variety of reasons.
We decided against a pellet stove when changing from wood to air to air solely because it needed electricity to work and would have meant ditching the woodburner altogether. I have enough wood to last out my life and have used the cheminee once each winter since when there has been a power cut. Couldn’t have done that if we had got rid of it.
So what is? Interested to know, or are you just looking at passive and solar gain?
I havé high regard for some of the German builders, particularly prefab. So were we to new build we would buy something as passive as we can get from Germany
Passive build, Erdwärmepumpe and photovoltaic, this is the sunniest part of Germany so very worth it.
Property is, however, EYEWATERINGLY expensive and frankly for a nasty broom cupboard and 0 mod cons you can get a good-sized habitable chateau in France. I’m fairly horrified.
Yes we need to get through the its special with fantastic insulation that will save you €xxx to this is the standard build. Too many green options are based on what you will save and having them factor that into the purchase price.
I would too but my papa won’t hear of it and is dead set against it. Not worth the hooha.
Edited to add the world is full of dangerous maniacs and natural disasters all just waiting to pounce if you aren’t in a nice safe upper floor fortress
Me too, but happily the builders of our house only had to go 5 kms up the road to M. Brives’ factory, as did we when we needed to extend it.
As I stand in my sunny balcony I look across with sadness at the new build (30 years ago) houses built in block and brick and which suffer from damp in the walls, and feel a very real sense of schadenfreude. Can’t help it, all council houses, what on earth was the Commune thinking about?
It seemed like a good idea at the time I suppose. Like our uk place, half seemed to be built with solid walls, all suffer damp issues, half with cavity walls that dont, all built around 1946 ish.
. What are rents like?
