Aquavit

That sounds very attractive, economical to run and as well as no mess - no work in cutting and splitting logs!

If we were starting from scratch I would probably go that route, although my experience of combi-boilers in the UK has been that they are unreliable and short lived.

wolfi

Aquavit, those particles are called "Feinstaub" in German - fine dust, they are also produced by Diesel engines and really dangerous for our lungs.
That's why in larger German cities fireplaces are severely restricted and they're even talking about banning Diesel engines from the city centers! Stuttgart has had lots of problems e g.

London seems a good example - afaik the (in)famous smog was produced by open fires - I was almost disappointed wwhen I went there and couldn't find it ...

Re insulation:
Just be careful - insulation on the outside seems not the best way I've read!
A roof with insulation below probably will be more help - but I'm not an expert there.

jetsam1

If you're in the village and have a gas connection great. If not there isn't much choice in the matter. In our rented Tanya there was the option for a gas connection but I franly didn't trust it!

Our new house will be on a tanya with no gas connection for about a KM. We are considering electric heaters powered by solar panels with a wood burner as back up. The house will be heavily insulated SIP so seems to make sense overall.

Oh the other issue is that gas will run out. It is also at the whim of Putin as the North Sea is beginning to get worked out. I am not convinced by these new deep water finds and Arctic exploration as the technical requirements are expensive and deep water drilling is rather challenging. Anf fracking is not really an answer.

Aquavit

One other thing worth mentioning, we are in the house all day so obviously heating is running continuously (apart from through the night). Not sure if others circumstances are the same?

jetsam1

My wife is at home all the time (maternity leave) so our heating is on all day. Normally as it is quite mild we have one fire in the morning and one in the evening and this keeps the warmth to an acceptable level. We run a kazan with six radiators in a traditional farm house also with pipes running to an adjacent building with another two radiators. We can usually get the indoor temperature up to around mid 20s fairly easily.

Aquavit

Thanks for the explanation Wolfi, of course in London the smog was caused by burning coal in open fires.

Do modern and much more efficient logburners still throw out these particles?

Peter_in_Hungary

Wood smoke has many particles but the small ones, sub 2.5uM, are 100 times smaller than the dia of a human hair. Evidence at the moment says these can pass though the cell walls in our lungs and go straight into the blood stream and then into organs where damage will occur.

Aquavit

Your house must be much better insulated than ours, I light the fire in the morning and from then I am feeding it constantly to maintain a comfortable temperature. Logs every 30 minutes or so and briquettes every hour or so. It seems to eat fuel.

Peter_in_Hungary

Yes

enter

Forgot to say we also have 10cm external insulation and triple glazed upvc windows, a must imo.

jetsam1

The walls are about a meter thick and made of earth!!!! About the only good thing about the house.........

Seems to hold heat in quite effectively, much better than my in laws' brick built house.

wolfi

Good for you (and the environment)!
When I had our house rebuilt almost 20 years ago those weren't even dreamt of in Hungary ...

A bit OT:
What I often wonder about when visiting our neighbours:
They like/need temperatures of more than 23, 24 degrees in their living rooms, especially older people - this is almost too much for us.

And then they sit there in t-shirts and bermudas ...

I still remember when I learned electronics almost 60 years ago that room temperature was defined as 18 degrees - much too cold nowadays.

jetsam1

18degrees is fine by me. These great things called jumpers......

wolfi

The same/similar here in the old part of the house which we use now for guests, also good in summer - it stays cool ...
The only problem we have when guests come in winter:
it takes almost a whole day to heat up the rooms ...

hobgoblins

So I guess the large crates of cut logs that are seen for sale at the roadsides are unseasoned and would need to be bought early in the year and stored for drying ready to be used the following winter then ? !