inset stove vs freestanding stove

angelmum

sorry for asking questions again for stoves. i know there's a lot of threads about this already but we don't have any idea's on how these would work. we we're originally eyeing on hercules 30b as we're planning to use it as our central heating as well. the room is 3.7 x 5.4 meters and 2.57 high and it seems that the hercules is too big for this room. we're originally planning on placing it as a freestanding stove as our chimney is already about a meter wide so putting it in front of the chimney would eat up the space in the room. but the cost of flue pipes, flashings etc is way over our budget already and someone told us that we might need to tile the wall as well as it will going to crack the plaster on the wall because its too hot.

now we're thinking of the inset stove so we could just use the chimney and cut down the cost of buying pipes (personally i like the look of the inset stove but my husband is worried about the heat output compared to freestanding one). but i reckon if we have a zoned heating installed we won't be really needing a big stove. we have 8 big radiators and 3 small ones (all double panel and we don't really use all the rooms at the moment)

i'm currently looking at esse 350gs, charwood slx45 and stratford Ti40b. would these be enough in our room even on a cold winter like last year?

would appreciate any suggestions

thanks and regards

cabledude

Hi Angelmum

We recently ripped out our old open fireplace and installed a boiler stove. We had the same concerns as you regarding the size of the stove and more importantly how much it would protrude into our room. we have a fairly similar sized living room to your measurements and were worried that a boiler stove might be a monstrosity in our room. But looking at it now it looks fine. We did however have to take out the old hearth and built up a new hearth from stone to rest the stove on ( on which we put 45 angles on corners to limit floor loss) We were pleasantly surpised how little floor space we lost in the end. The guy in the shop where we purchased the stove told us that while the inset stoves were good in terms of looking as near to what you had before, i.e. open fire in a fireplace, the heat output out would not be as much..... which may be important to you seeing as you want to run your heating with it....

Best advice i can give you is to visit as many retailers as you can and pick their brains.

paddy147

cabledude wrote: »

Hi Angelmum

We recently ripped out our old open fireplace and installed a boiler stove. We had the same concerns as you regarding the size of the stove and more importantly how much it would protrude into our room. we have a fairly similar sized living room to your measurements and were worried that a boiler stove might be a monstrosity in our room. But looking at it now it looks fine. We did however have to take out the old hearth and built up a new hearth from stone to rest the stove on ( on which we put 45 angles on corners to limit floor loss) We were pleasantly surpised how little floor space we lost in the end. The guy in the shop where we purchased the stove told us that while the inset stoves were good in terms of looking as near to what you had before, i.e. open fire in a fireplace, the heat output out would not be as much..... which may be important to you seeing as you want to run your heating with it....

Best advice i can give you is to visit as many retailers as you can and pick their brains.

I can say that inset stoves do give out ALOT of heat.

I had a Stovax Riva 66 multi fuel cassette stove installed into a conventional fireplace(fireplace demolished and rebuilt to suit inset stove) and it chucks out some serious heat indeed.Its allmost impossible to sit in the sitting rom when the Stovax is going full whack,too hot for me in fact.:eek:

cabledude

paddy147 wrote: »

I can say that inset stoves do give out ALOT of heat.

I had a Stovax Riva 66 multi fuel cassette stove installed into a conventional fireplace(fireplace demolished and rebuilt to suit inset stove) and it chucks out some serious heat indeed.Its allmost impossible to sit in the sitting rom when the Stovax is going full whack,too hot for me in fact.:eek:

Nice image. Very tidy... Is that a boiler model.?

paddy147

cabledude wrote: »

Nice image. Very tidy... Is that a boiler model.?

Stovax dont do inset/cassette stoves with a back boiler.

Its just a normal multi fuel cassette stove.

angelmum

that's a really nice stove paddy!

cabledude i hope you won't mind mind me asking but what's the make of your stove so i could compare the output as we almost have the same size room. i know on calculations they said that 3.6 kw will do the room but it would be nice to hear real experience from this. we did went on different shops already and evveryone's giving us different advices and some told us that freestanding stove is better but then i read a lot of hands on experience here on the boards that they say that the inset ones are effective as well so kinda confused at the moment. though i really like the look of inset but husband is more on the heat output

tedshredsonfire

angel dont know on the charnwood but they are a good make as are the arrow and esse. the arrow is only 2kw to room but the esse is 4kw to room. Also will you have a rad in the room beiing fed from the stove and lastly have you got a heat load worked out for the rads?

angelmum

thanks for the info tedshredsonfire

im getting a cheaper quote on esse and personally like the looks of it than charnwood but some shops are telling us that charnwood is better but very expensive. do you have any knowledge on the esse if it's a good one as well then might settle on it

just got calcualtor for heat loads for rads and in the room where we're placing the stove we nedd 3089 w or 10541 btus

there's a radiator as well in the room and husband think that we might not need to turn it on with the stove inside.

also we are currently using an oil fired central heating system is it possible to have the oil as back up for some radiators?

thanks and regards

cabledude

angelmum wrote: »

that's a really nice stove paddy!

cabledude i hope you won't mind mind me asking but what's the make of your stove so i could compare the output as we almost have the same size room. i know on calculations they said that 3.6 kw will do the room but it would be nice to hear real experience from this. we did went on different shops already and evveryone's giving us different advices and some told us that freestanding stove is better but then i read a lot of hands on experience here on the boards that they say that the inset ones are effective as well so kinda confused at the moment. though i really like the look of inset but husband is more on the heat output

don't mind at all... it's a henley stove-blasket boiler model 16kw. 4 kw to room and 12 kw to heating. this stove can heat our living room room easily. we have two medium sized rads in this room which we have had to turn off. along with heating living room it will run our central heating including heating a cylinder of hot water.

in terms of what your needs are you have to be clear in your mind as to whether you want a space heater i.e. stove without boiler or a stove that will run your central heating. it will all depend on size of property and Kw's of heat needed to run heating.if it's a space heater your looking for perhaps an inset stove will suit. but if you want a system that will run your central heating system i think a freestanding stove would be a better option. well thats what we used and it works for us.

i see from a later post you are wondering can you use oil as a back up for the stove. our experience is that we can switch easily between oil or stove depending on what we what to use. took a fair amount of plumbing work but it's done now and it works a charm. a good plumber who knows what he's doing will offer you invaluable advice.

cabledude

paddy147 wrote: »

I can say that inset stoves do give out ALOT of heat.

I had a Stovax Riva 66 multi fuel cassette stove installed into a conventional fireplace(fireplace demolished and rebuilt to suit inset stove) and it chucks out some serious heat indeed.Its allmost impossible to sit in the sitting rom when the Stovax is going full whack,too hot for me in fact.:eek:

I meant heat out put in terms of boilers. inset stoves tend not have as much boiler output as a similar priced freestanding stove.

angelmum

thanks cabledude. seems the same output as the one im looking at so i can relax now . we're waiting for some plumbers to come in the house to get some quote to have two systems to have an idea if we're within our budget before we buy the stove. i'll let you know how we get on.

thanks again!

slave1

FYI,

The Stanley range has €200 off at present from a voucher scheme, the scheme is a bit messy but effectively after some silly paperwork it's €200 off. Just purchased a Erin enamel HPB model to replace a back boiler...

tedshredsonfire

Hi angel we have sold a lot of esses non boiler and proably about 10 greenswitch so far with good reports on them all. in my opinion nearly all the big english makes, esse, charnwood, villager, stovax, arrow, hunter etc are on a par with each other and usually within shouting distance price wise with charnwood maybe being a bit higher than the others. You see major differences price wise between them and the chinese guys for obvious reasons.
Your plumber should be able to rig it so both systems can run using the same system but may need to make a few adjustments to your central heating system but nothing to major. give us a shout if you need more info