Non-Boiler v Boiler Stove

Up Donegal

I’m thinking of replacing a non-boiler insert stove with a boiler one. I asked a plumber for his opinion on this and he advised me against it. I was surprised at this because at present, the non-boiler stove gives out tremendous heat and I thought that this heat could be put to use if I had a back boiler installed. I asked him why and he said that the boiler would take away the heat from the room and that it would cost a lot more in solid fuel to keep the boiler water warm enough to heat the 6 upstairs and 9 downstairs radiators. He said that if the house was smaller, then it might be an option. The house is 1½ storey detached. I also use oil.
I’m going to get a few more local opinions but I’d like to know what boards.ie users’ thoughts are on this.
TIA

Wearb

I agree with your plumber. Also most boiler stoves that have seen added to an already built house are not installed properly, mostly because of the difficulty of installing the proper pipe runs.

KildareP

I also agree - as someone who has one!

It eats fuel. Grand if you have a free fuel source, not so if you're buying it in.

We use the compressed wood stove ecologs which burn very hot.

We've a small standalone Stanley in an open kitchen/dining area with an extension built-on that you put a half to three-quarters of one ecolog an hour into it and the place will be t-shirt in winter level warm after about two hours.

We've a 15kW stove with a backboiler in the sitting room that needs as many as 3 of the same ecologs an hour to provide the same level of central heating as the oil. 10 rads in total so even then it's probably still on the light side!

We've found best case if we get the central heating to temperature using the oil then light the fire, you'll get away with 1 ecolog an hour to keep the rads warm (but by no means hot) during the day which is usually enough to maintain a pleasant moderate background temperature all day. Not necessarily t-shirt in winter warm though!

To start the system from cold on back boiler only with no oil input then you're straight out looking at 2-3 ecologs an hour for as many hours just to get up to oil-equivalent temperature, then at least 2 ecologs an hour to keep the rads "hot" or you can reduce back to 1 per hour to keep the rads just warm.

And in either case, by evening we'd end up going back to 2 per hour for an hour or two to give a final boost of heat for the night, or on a particularly cold (Beast from the East style) day we could well end up feeding a constant 2 an hour in for the entire day or having to fall back to oil.

For you, to be heating 15 rads, the hot water and still give decent output into the room itself (the back boiler will definitely absorb a large amount of the heat - a fairly small fire will give almost no heat into the room at all) with oil equivalent performance you're probably looking at a 30kW stove and that is going to demolish your fuel supply to keep going.


I reckon, all in, the oil comes out a good bit cheaper but herself likes the fire!