Notes

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler
Click for info , the house or cottage where we live was built in the late 19th century mainly of stone construction, for farm workers to call home in near their work on the farm ( normally called a tied cottage) and had been occupied by a family focusing on the farm prior to our move into the house in 1987, because when a certain amount of modernisation had been done by ourselves over the years, new bathroom, showers and kitchen etc.

At the end of July this year we'd the chimney sweep in to clean the soot from our two chimneys.

The one that had been used non stop over last winter as our main heating was the worst since it had a Parkray multi fuel heater fitted in to the wall with a surround of tiles and tiled hearth; this fire had been there since before we moved in and even though pretty ugly had given good service over time by heating four radiators and the hot water in the winter.

We'd it fuelled by anthracite eggs or ovals, which gave plenty of heat but this fuel gets very expensive, in addition, it comes with certain ecological issues attached being a fossil fuel, which spoils our carbon footprint. We had occasionally burnt wood inside it but it was not a perfect wood burning stove due to the grate being built for a coal based fuel.

"BAD NEWS" said the sweep when he had finished the work, "your back boiler is leaking in to the grate and there's many wet in underneath of the grate".

So, we'd to bite the bullet and replace the fire with a new one of some sort, we had looked at all the different options over the years and decided against oil because we have access to a lot of wood from the farm. Also the majority of the modern systems be determined by having electricity to ignite and control their burners, and because we have been at the mercy of power cuts in the wintertime, just when one is most vulnerable to the cold; it had been important for us that we had a system that will work on its, we wanted it to keep to heat the water and the radiators upstairs by convection to keep the house warm until the power supply returns.

Off we went to StoveTec in Hereford UK to look at what was open to us and the amount of it could cost, we viewed all of the models in the showroom and chose a Hunter multi fuel with internal boiler (Hunter certainly are a section of the Parkray Group apparently), with single door with one clear pain of glass in leading, which I liked because it had none of the fiddly bits just clean lines and simple design.

Steve who owns StoveTec then arranged to come out to do a niche site survey on the next Wednesday; whereupon the measurements for the bottom and the layout of all pipe work was checked, and the chimney stack was inspected from the garden.

The quote, which was very reasonable and included the fitting of a new stainless chimney liner, was accepted also it was arranged for the men to start out work the next week.

The team duly arrived and proceeded to start with the removal of the original fireplace, in preparation, I had already turned off the water and drained the machine with the garden hose prior to their arrival.

Much like all building workers, we made sure that copious amounts of tea, instant coffee and biscuits were available during the day in large mugs with an excellent quality tea bag per mug with various spoon-fulls of sugar and whole milk according to taste, which after the first day we learnt off by heart.

Removing the old hearth created a great deal of dust and noise from the hammer drill and chisel, and a big quantity of waste rubble and a pile of bricks that I decided to save for any small garden project which may require a few bricks, a barbecue involves mind, which is not just a high priority for all of us but may come in handy in the future .

Once the old tiled hearth and surround had been broken up, the feed pipes to the boiler were now exposed enough to be able to get a hack saw in to slice the pipes and free up the stove for removal. It had been very heavy and had to be manoeuvred onto a sack trolley to be wheeled out of the house and lifted into the truck for scrap.

It was then that we were able to see what we thought was the entire extent of the space available at the trunk of the fire, we could see a massive amount brick and stone infill, for what we thought will need to have been the initial cast iron black grate; complete with an oven privately, which looked so pretty in pictures but were extremely difficult to get the oven around temperature and were dirty as the fire was open rather than enclosed; but they normally had a trivet to hang or place a pan or kettle over the fire for cooking soups and stews.

But No, that they had to remove two more courses of brick before the final aperture was revealed in every its glory, it certainly made the area look so much bigger, once all of the rubble have been removed and some tidy up had been done.

Meanwhile the men had placed the climbing frame and ladders up onto the roof and round the chimney stack so the new stainless liner could possibly be lowered in to the chimney stack, once it had been set up a plate was cemented in and a fresh chimney pot and cowl suited to top out the flu.

Where in fact the liner came down into the fireplace it was fitted into an enamelled stove pipe via a socket fitting on the end of the cut flu liner, and then into the socket on top of the brand new Hunter Stove.

Prior to the new stove could be placed into position there had to be a new base fitted on the floor of the cavity, we finally chosen large pieces of slate, that is more commensurate with an old cottage than the polished granite that people thought about first, this is fixed in place on to the floor of the base level with a coat of cement and tapped level.


Another job was to match a metal plate to the inside of the hearth above the new stove, where the new flu came by way of a hole cut in the middle to block out the rest of the chimney and stop any of the soot from the old fire falling into the room in the future; this is sealed around all the edges to finish the lower part of the chimney off (this is later sprayed with black enamel paint).

With the hot water pipes connected to the boiler (the out flow hot to the top, and the inflow linked to the bottom on the opposite side of the boiler cold), the water was then turned back on and the machine filled to check on for leaks and and test under great pressure with the pump running.

Then it had been all systems choose ignition to see how it all caused a fire burning in the grate. It was simply amazing just how fast the boiler heated up and hot water started to progress the pipes to the warm water cistern. It is now weekly since we've had it up and running and we now have got the hang of it managing to keep it in over night with the aid of some very dry seasoned oak blocks.

There is no doubt in my mind that the main thing with owning a wood burning stove would be to have dry seasoned wood constantly otherwise you won't burn correctly and it willl not get hot enough, plus it will clog up the chimney with tar and obtain the glass front of the door all covered in a dirty black coating of soot and tar. I usually believe that if the wood burns slowly down like a cigarette glowing across its length the stove is working correctly and that the wood is dry.

The best types of wood to burn locally all around us is oak or ash when you can get it, but I likewise have access to plenty of willow, which is OK if very dry, I occasionally get yourself a little bit of pine, which burns very fast and noisily spitting and popping away in the grate.

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