Stove with back boiler - require distance from water tank?

Hi,
We are building a new house and are putting a multi-fuel stove in the living room. Our plumber recommends getting one with a back boiler and hooking it up to the heating system (oil boiler is primary source for the UFH throughout the house) via a buffer tank so it heats the house rather than just the room its in.
However, I've had some advice lately saying that the energy used by the stove to heat the pipes to the water tank/cylinder which is located over 30 feet from the stove will be so much that I won't see much effect in the heating system from the stove. Add to this the fact that the back boiler will make the stove less effective in the room it is located I'm wondering is it worth doing it at all?

Does anyone have experience of using a stove to power the heating system where it is located so far from the water cylinder?

Technical information is available here


http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/copper-pipe-heat-loss-d_19.html

And here

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/copper-pipes-insulation-heat-loss-d_52.html

My reading of the above would suggest that for 1” copper pipe with 1” of insulation that every hour you would lose 10 Btu per foot. So that’s 30 feet x 2 x 10 btu = 600 btu per hour. That calculation is for water in the pipe being 70 oC and the air surrounding it being 20 oC (therefore inside the insulated envelope of the house).

Note 25mm (1”) of pipe insulation would be significant and not your normal 13mm (1/2”) that you see in most installations in Ireland.


While 600 btu is not ideal, it’s no reason to not install a stove. You can’t get a rad with an output of 600 Btu but if you could it should be a single panel about 1ft by 1ft.


The small Waterford stove the Fionn boiler is capable of producing 27,000 Btu going on full for an hour so you won’t notice the 600 Btu losses. When looking at stoves it is very important to know the heat requirement of the room it is located (room output) and how many rads you would like to run off it (boiler output). You must get a stove that is not too big heat output wise for the room or too low for output to rads.