Advise on added multi fuel stove with back boiler

C

CKT

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Hi,

I am in the process of adding a sun room to my house, I am going to put a stove into.

The builder has suggested that I can put one in with a back boiler and connect into my excising oil fired central heating.

He said I can connect in through the water/supply return from the oil burner in my back garden, and I would also need a one way valve, and a pump.

Would this work? and could I have the stove lit and turn off the rads using thermostatic valves if needed.

Also, what spec of stove would I need? the room is 5.6 X 3.8 m and I have 7 double rads and 7 single, and immersion tank.

Thank you
 
Plumbing in a boiler stove is quite complex.

This is a very detailed thread on Boards.ie about stoves. You should read it, post no. 5 decribes the plumbing requirements.
 
We recently installed a stove and had to consider whether to go for a back boiler or not. Most of the advice we received seemed to be based on the idea that the fire is on anyway, so you get free water heating if you have a back boiler. This is not correct.

The fact is that stoves with back boilers yield less heat output to the room as some energy is being used to heat the water in the boiler. Or to look at it another way, if you want the same heat delivered to the room, a boiler stove will require more fuel than a non boiler stove.

Also, if you just use a boiler stove to heat domestic how water in your cylinder, you can sometimes overheat the water which ends up in the heat being dumped via the expansion pipe into the header tank which does nothing for efficiency.

We decided that the extra cost and complexity of the plumbing, the extra cost of the boiler stove, the extra ongoing fuel costs etc did not justify any benefit that might be gained and we opted for a non boiler stove.

Since we installed the stove, I have kept a careful eye on the running costs and can definitely say the following:

1. The stove is definitely more efficient than an open fire even when it is not in use as it reduces drafts.
2. The stove is definitely less efficient than our central heating system (a bog standard kerosene boiler and rads etc). (Therefore a good decision not to go for a boiler stove.)
3. Because of point 2 above, the stove will never pay for itself.
4. In spite of point 3 above, we love the stove and would recommend it.

Hope this helps you decide.

3CC
 
Thanks, Hoagy and 3CC.

3CC did you get a price for the plumbing at the time? can you remember how much it was?
 
No, we did not get a price for the plumbing.

In any case, I think it would be very specific to the house. In our case the pipework was very close to the stove location and it would have been relatively low but a stove in a conservatory could be more expensive.
 
One of my family members got a back boiler stove in just before christmas. The plumber had a daily rate of 130 euro a day and you paid for any additional materials he needed to supply.
 
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