New stove questions...

jlm29

We had a Henley 8kw non-boiler stove fitted a month ago. We've been burning coal- (a mix of premium polish and cosiglow) ever since. The room is warm, but as far as we can notice, it's no warmer than It was with the open fire. We might be burning slightly less coal to achieve the same heat, but it's hard to tell exactly, because of other variables (I'm at home all day at the mo, so stove is lit first thing, as opposed to in the evenings, previously we were also burning an awful lot of timber, but our timber is quite wet, so we haven't been burning it since stove was fitted).
The stove never goes above a certain temperature- no matter how much coal is put on it, it would never get warm enough that I would close off the air supply at the bottom. The radiator in the sitting room has a thermostat in it, and when we lit the open fire, the rad never got very hot, but now it does, which tells me the room temp is lower than previously.
As I say, the room isn't cold, but I would have expected to use less fuel with stove in situ. My mother has a 6kw insert stove, and she lights it at lunchtime, closes off the air supply, and puts one more fire on in the evening. If she puts more than a small amount of coal and one stick on, you couldn't sit in the room with the heat. Her room would still feel warm the following morning. Our house is much older, so I wouldn't have expected quite the same results, but we're a bit disappointed with the result. We used the same, very reputable stove installer.
My questions- is Henley a far inferior stove? - the installer recommended it, so I thought it would be OK
Should we be burning something else/better than what we are?
Is there some knack that I'm missing out on?
perhaps it's a case of managing expectations- maybe I thought I'd spend the winter stripping off while throwing two knobs of coal on the fire every three hours!!!

Robbie.G

jlm29 wrote: »

We had a Henley 8kw non-boiler stove fitted a month ago. We've been burning coal- (a mix of premium polish and cosiglow) ever since. The room is warm, but as far as we can notice, it's no warmer than It was with the open fire. We might be burning slightly less coal to achieve the same heat, but it's hard to tell exactly, because of other variables (I'm at home all day at the mo, so stove is lit first thing, as opposed to in the evenings, previously we were also burning an awful lot of timber, but our timber is quite wet, so we haven't been burning it since stove was fitted).
The stove never goes above a certain temperature- no matter how much coal is put on it, it would never get warm enough that I would close off the air supply at the bottom. The radiator in the sitting room has a thermostat in it, and when we lit the open fire, the rad never got very hot, but now it does, which tells me the room temp is lower than previously.
As I say, the room isn't cold, but I would have expected to use less fuel with stove in situ. My mother has a 6kw insert stove, and she lights it at lunchtime, closes off the air supply, and puts one more fire on in the evening. If she puts more than a small amount of coal and one stick on, you couldn't sit in the room with the heat. Her room would still feel warm the following morning. Our house is much older, so I wouldn't have expected quite the same results, but we're a bit disappointed with the result. We used the same, very reputable stove installer.
My questions- is Henley a far inferior stove? - the installer recommended it, so I thought it would be OK
Should we be burning something else/better than what we are?
Is there some knack that I'm missing out on?
perhaps it's a case of managing expectations- maybe I thought I'd spend the winter stripping off while throwing two knobs of coal on the fire every three hours!!!

Burning polish coal is not good for the stove use coal designed for stoves
You need to check that the baffles are in the right place
Henley stoves are a good enough stove no better or worse than a lot out there

jlm29

We're using up coal we had bought in before we got the stove. I'll launch the search for the perfect make of coal once that's gone!
I will confess I had to google "baffle", but I did that, and it looks as though it's in the right place to me!