Types of Wood-Burning (Biomass) Boilers and Stoves
Wood can be used to heat your home in several different types of appliance, in several different forms. You can use it to heat one or more rooms, or the whole house. Plus you can also use it to supply your hot water.
Wood-Burning Stoves
The most basic appliances you can get are wood-burning stoves, which run on logs. These are used to heat a single room, and have efficiencies of over 70%. There are many models available, and they can be a very attractive feature in a living room. A stove will need flues and must exhaust to a chimney.
Some wood-burners will be prohibited in smokeless ones (e.g. large cities) but some others are allowed. For example logs can be burned in a ceramic stove. These can be around 90% efficient, and retain heat for up to a day after the fire has gone out. Some are allowed in smoke-free ones.
Another variant of the basic wood-burning stove is one that is fitted with a back boiler that heats water for one or more radiators, or to supply your hot water. These can achieve high efficiencies (of up to 90%), but need reloading with new logs every few hours, and also regular removal of the waste ash. You can sometimes reduce the frequency of refueling to once a day by having a larger hot water tank installed.
Pellet Stoves
Finally, instead of burning logs, there are special wood-burning stoves that run on pellets. The advantages of these are:
- They have a container that holds up to 3 days of fuel and automatically feed the pellets into the fire, so it needs less attention from you.
- They also burn the pellets very efficiently (up to 90% efficiency), and so use less fuel and produce little waste ash (generally the ash pan only needs emptying about once a month)
- They have temperature and timer controls so that you can control the heat closely
- They have fans that distribute warm air around the room, so give a more even distribution of temperature and are safer than traditional stoves (i.e. don't get as hot)
- They have automatic ignition
Central Heating with Pellet Boilers
You can also run your central heating from a boiler than runs on wood pellets. These boilers are fully automatic just like oil or gas boilers. They use special controls to make sure the right amount of air and fuel is being supplied to the burning chamber. This allows them to achieve high efficiencies of up to 90%, and low emissions.
This is almost as convenient a way to heat your home as using oil. The boiler can be run on a timer and set to provide different temperatures the same way as an oil boiler. The pellet burner does need cleaning about once a month, when the ash should be removed, but apart from that the equipment needs little supervision.
Wood chips are another alternative fuel to pellets. However these are generally only suitable in very large houses and are not cost effective in typical houses, partly because they need an extensive mechanism to automatically supply the fuel to the boiler. It can also be difficult to secure a consistent supply of wood chips with the right moisture content.
If you are interested in installing one of the above in your home you can request a quotation from our installation partner, by following this link to our enquiry form.
