First things first, the house or cottage where we live was built in the late 19th century mainly of stone construction, for farm workers to live in near their focus on the farm ( normally called a tied cottage) and had been occupied by a family focusing on the farm prior to our move into the house in 1987, since when a certain amount of modernisation had been done by ourselves through the years, new bathroom, showers and kitchen etc. By the end of July this season we'd the chimney sweep in to clean the soot from our two chimneys. Stove Showroom Near Me York that have been used non stop over last winter as our main heating was the worst as it had a Parkray multi fuel heater fitted in to the wall with a surround of tiles and tiled hearth; this fire have been there since before we moved in and although pretty ugly had given good service over the years by heating four radiators and the hot water in the winter. We had it fuelled by anthracite eggs or ovals, which gave a lot of heat but this fuel gets very expensive, in addition, it comes with certain ecological issues attached being a fossil fuel, which spoils our carbon footprint. We'd occasionally burnt wood in it but it had not been a perfect wood burning stove as a result of grate being built for a coal based fuel. BAD NEWS said the sweep when he had finished the job, your back boiler is leaking into the grate and there is a great deal of wet in underneath of the grate. So, we'd to bite the bullet and replace the fire with a new one of some kind, we had viewed all of the different options over the years and decided against oil because we have access to a lot of wood from the farm. Also the majority of the modern systems depend on having electricity to ignite and control their burners, and because we have been subject to power cuts in the winter, just when one is most susceptible to the cold; it had been important for us that people had a system which will work on its own, we wanted it to keep to heat the water and the radiators upstairs by convection to keep the house warm until the power supply returns. Off we went to StoveTec in Hereford UK to look at what was available to us and the amount of it could cost, we viewed all the models in the showroom and chose a Hunter multi fuel with internal boiler (Hunter certainly are a area of the Parkray Group apparently), with single door with one clear pain of glass in leading, which I liked because it had none of the fiddly bits just clean lines and simple design. Steve who owns StoveTec then arranged to come out to do a niche site survey on another Wednesday; whereupon the measurements for the bottom and the layout of all pipe work was checked, and the chimney stack was inspected from the garden. The quote, which was affordable and included the fitting of a fresh stainless steel chimney liner, was accepted also it was arranged for the men to start work another week. The team duly arrived and proceeded to start with the removal of the initial fireplace, in preparation, I had already turned off the water and drained the machine with the garden hose prior to their arrival. As with all building workers, we made sure that copious amounts of tea, instant coffee and biscuits were available during the day in large mugs with an excellent quality tea bag per mug with various spoon-fulls of sugar and dairy according to taste, which following the first day we learnt off by heart. Removing the old fire place created a great deal of dust and noise from the hammer drill and chisel, and a large level of waste rubble and a pile of bricks that I made a decision to save for just about any small garden project which might require a few bricks, a barbecue comes to mind, which is not a high priority for all of us but may come in handy in the future . After the old tiled hearth and surround had been split up, the feed pipes to the boiler were now exposed enough to be able to get yourself a hack saw directly into slice the pipes and free up the stove for removal. It was very heavy and needed to be manoeuvred onto a sack trolley to be wheeled out of the house and lifted in to the truck for scrap. It was then that we could actually see what we thought was the entire extent of the area available at the back of the fire, we're able to see a large amount of brick and stone infill, for what we thought must have been the original cast iron black grate; filled with an oven privately, which looked so pretty in pictures but were extremely difficult to get the oven up to temperature and were dirty because the fire was open rather than enclosed; however they normally had a trivet to hold or place a pan or kettle on the fire for cooking soups and stews. But No, they had to remove two more courses of brick prior to the final aperture was revealed in every its glory, it certainly made the area look so much bigger, once all of the rubble had been removed and some tidy up had been done. Meanwhile the men had placed the climbing frame and ladders up onto the roof and round the chimney stack so that the new stainless steel liner could possibly be lowered into the chimney stack, once it was set up a plate was cemented in and a new chimney pot and cowl fitted to top out the flu. Where in fact the liner came down into the fireplace it was fitted into an enamelled stove pipe with a socket fitting on the end of the cut flu liner, and then into the socket on top of the new Hunter Stove. Before the new stove could be placed into position there needed to be a new base fitted on to the floor of the cavity, we finally chosen large pieces of slate, which is more commensurate with an old cottage than the polished granite that people thought about first, that is fixed in place on the floor of the bottom level with a coat of cement and tapped level. Another job was to match a metal plate to the inside of the fire place above the new stove, where in fact the new flu came through a hole cut in the centre to block out all of those other chimney and stop any of the soot from the old fire falling down into the room later on; this was sealed around all of the edges to finish the lower area of the chimney off (this was later sprayed with black enamel paint). With the warm water pipes connected to the boiler (the out flow hot to the most notable, and the inflow connected to the bottom on the contrary side of the boiler cold), the water was then turned back on and the system filled to check on for leaks and and test under pressure with the pump running. Then it was all systems choose ignition to observe how it all worked with a fire burning in the grate. It was simply amazing precisely how fast the boiler heated up and hot water started to progress the pipes to the warm water cistern. It really is now a week since we have had it up and running and we now have got the hang of it managing to keep it in starightaway using some very dry seasoned oak blocks. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the crucial thing with running a wood burning stove would be to have dry seasoned wood all the time otherwise you won't burn correctly and it willl not get hot enough, and yes it will clog up the chimney with tar and obtain the glass front of the entranceway all covered in a dirty black coating of soot and tar. I usually believe if the wood burns slowly down such as a cigarette glowing across its length the stove is working correctly and that the wood is dry. The best types of wood to burn locally all around us is oak or ash if you can obtain it, but I also have access to plenty of willow, that is OK if very dry, I occasionally get a little bit of pine, which burns very fast and noisily spitting and popping away in the grate.
Stove Showroom Near Me York
