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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

The Wood Burner  - Part Two

The snags

 There are three major potential snags to a wood burner

Power cut
Lack of wood
Leaks
Warm weather

You can design your system to overcome these quite easily

Many smallholders live remotely, cold weather and an inoperative system can be pretty unpleasant if not downright dangerous.

We need to go back to a slightly more distant time, when bedroom windows were frosted on the inside and central heating was for wimps - at least in Britain.

It was not a cosy addition to the decor but a very real basis to providing warmth, food and hot drinks. Prior to the arrival of town gas and later electricity, it was all we had.

Where houses have existing open fires, these are to be valued and incorporated into more sophisticated schemes.

Most people adding wood burners will be adding them in the kitchen or kitchen area.

That may well leave the drawing room, family room or lounge, perhaps even the dining room with working, or potentially working, chimneys.

To these, for the moment, we direct our attention. They already provide the basis for a back-up or emergency system and can even provide more.

A modern source of power, but a vulnerable one, especially if above ground.

Impractical luxury, incomparable at Christmas.

Once it would have been without canopy and fire basket, the yule log would have been burnt on the bricks and the smoke would have found its way up the chimney, if you were lucky.

I'm sure it would have smoked badly.

If you inherit one of these, the very first thing is to check that the chimney is clear. It almost certainly will be, it will be large enough for a small boy to be sent up, but it might have attracted a squirrel dray.

You will probably inherited a canopy and a fire basket. Try it.

A consultation with the local blacksmith produced a formula.

"Twenty inches and one half," he said, firmly. "That is the distance you need between the canopy and the floor of the fire basket."   He made a new one to that specification following some experiments with bricks.

It worked perfectly. The writer has no idea if it always worked, but it worked on this fire and another similar.

The writer can recall many years ago, visiting the Island of Mull and the famous little town of  Tobermory, there was a pub, complete with clouds of smoke and a landlord, water running from his eyes, cursing a similar fire.

The writer surveyed the beast and confidently instructed his host, "twenty inches and one half."

Sometime perhaps a reader may drop in for a dram on a cold winter's day in a pub on the waterfront in Tobermory and claim a refill on the basis that he knows the man who stopped the fire smoking, with all of twenty and one half inch.

  Twenty and one half inch
or 1'8.5" if you prefer.

So, open fires are simple and easy to use given just a basic supply of wood, kindling and paper.

Wood spits, so a suitably sized fireguard is a necessity.

They warmed the world for many generations.

Any logs will have to be small, but these burn well enough in most.

If a fire is used on a very regular basis with wood, it may be necessary to line the chimney. Wood tar can penetrate the bricks and leave a nasty stain on walls.

This fire with a fairly small chimney has a grate suitable for both coal and occasional logs.

Anyone younger than maybe fifty may need a refresher course in laying a fire!

This makes it rather more suitable for using coal or smokeless fuel, reduces the consumption and stops so much of the heat being lost up the chimney. There is a "damper" to adjust the draught from the chimney, and an adjustable air supply to the grate.

You can see that we are getting very close to the design of some wood burners.

You are seeing a transitional phase, between an open fire and a closed burner.

Add some side panels and a glass door and you would have a basic wood burner.

Broken but still heating a room.

The need for a sparkguard is eliminated, and that is a major  improvement where it is not possible to give constant attendance.

Some wood burners have adjustable grates and can be quickly switched between coal, coal derivatives and wood.

This particular wood burner had sprung an irreparable leak after decade long service providing central heating, but was still useable as a room heater after disconnection from the water supply and some other minor adjustments.

It was replaced this year with an almost identical model, because of the need for full central heating.

A self-sufficient operation but one with cold bedrooms and kitchen, no means of heating water and no independent means of cooking.

Some hot water and some cooking facilities can be provided by means of portable gas appliances familiar to anyone used to camping or caravanning.

Nobody who had lived through the 1940s or 50s in Britain would feel the least bit deprived.

It is hardly modern living, but even in hard weather it is survivable with a reasonable degree of comfort.

Hardly modern living.

I'm cold, please could you light the fire!

A thermostat will cater for daily fluctuations of temperature in a gas, oil or electric heating system, but obviously that does not work with solid fuels such as wood.

You can introduce a degree of automatic heat control but if you are feeding logs, the heat has to go somewhere.  If you provide no fuel or fire, there is no heat.

In summer, unless you are using wood for cooking, the wood burner won't be alight and in spring and autumn you will often not need heat in the kitchen during the day.

In the evening when you settle down after dinner, the drawing room may well be that little bit chilly, and the small fire suggested by the puppy is the perfect answer.

Quick to light, quick to go out, the open fire is the perfect answer to a warm day and a cool evening.

In the last couple of weeks, we have had the electricity cut off several times and currently have no telephone and no internet connection. The mobile phone works, but the only signal is available by standing at the bottom of the meadow in below zero temperatures.

A strike at the oil refineries has just been settled, but some places have no gas and the ice on the roads means a shortage of salt and some difficulty with fuel oil deliveries.

Some areas lucky enough to have mains gas, don't have mains gas at the time of writing.

But the primitive back-up system we have described will keep you reasonably warm and comfortable, providing you have logs, coal or peat, even during the worst snow event for twenty years.

Meals are easily provided through just such a series of service breakdowns by a simple portable gas cooker. You do not need to cook on wood to be self-sufficient for a short period.

This single burner runs on a small canister of gas.

There is even the childhood sound of the long forgotten whistling kettle for the regular tea and coffee.

February 2009

The next episode, we will talk about the kitchen and central heating and choice of main wood burner.

RETURN TO PART ONE

...back-up heating from

-  Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.