ive read somewhere pollyanna, that the price of wood IS going up steadily
A stovepipe thermometer attaches to the flue about a foot above the stove. They cost about £7, look on the bay or in your local stove shop, idea is to keep the temp in the right range for efficient operation. Too low, tar etc, middle just right, too hot wasting fuel. It is obvious once you get one. You might know this but once the stove is going (both vents open at start), control wood burning with the top vent / bottom closed, smokeless just with bottom vent / top closed.
Agree with the comments re wood supplies, just to add we use smoke less fuel when we go to bed to keep it going till the morning, XL or Excell? the best we have found from local coal merchant. This way stove doesn’t go out from end nov to end feb / march!
Lots of folk installing burners hence installers being busy, and the price of wood going up. Check on the website to see how much the parts are to see how much of the quote is labour.
bit of an update
ive had an engineer round to have a look and price up for all flue work, from plaster, outwards . and another two coming round on monday
basically im going to install the hearth and buy the burner, vitreous pipe and elbow,
then i know exactly what they are all charging for the SAME work, no mark up on burner etc
Have you had the size of stove you need worked out by a qualified heating engineer, for the size of the rooms, taking in to account the height and window area? I went to one outfit that just asked for the floor dimensions and tried to tell me I only needed a 1.5Kw stove, if there is such a thing. This outfit have now gone bankrupt. When I had it done properly it worked out that I needed a 7 to 7.5Kw stove so I went for the 8Kw one.
not yet!!! ive worked it out for a ROOM, not for a CONSERVATORY. the results were a 2.6KW. i’ll have to see what the “experts” say