Wood Burners

Always used real wood when I had one, tried the fake logs hated them. If you are in a smoke free zone think you have to use kiln dried or risk being told off. 

Use mine a lot, a beautiful thing to have. I buy seasoned hardwood logs by the cubic metre, which seems by far the cheapest way of doing it.
Plenty of kindling, use firelighters not newspaper to get it started (they don't clog up the chimney) and when the glass needs cleaning use an old cloth, dampened and dipped in fine ash to gently scrub off the dark marks.
Enjoy!

We use the wax and straw firelighters, bit of kindling and not too large logs to get it going. Trick to reloading without smoking yourself out is to wait until the fire is red hot embers before loading. Also make sure you understand the controls to change the air flow so once up and running it doesn't consume the wood too quickly. Use ours all the time to try and limit our oil consumption. Get a tipper load delivered by a local farmer for £80 !, result !!

Just waiting for one to be fitted, really looking forward to it, even ordered some what I call ‘retirement chairs’ to go in front of so I can read them n front of the fire, turning into JR Hartley. 🙄

Inherited an aga with our house, had it took out and the gas units used in a month dropped by 75% compared to the previous year, at least with a log burner it can be on when we needed it, rather than pretty much all the time with the aga.

Been advised to get kiln dried logs, as there’s less moisture in them, but need to get and built a log store first before I get the logs, which apparently there is a bit of a wait for at the moment so I’m told.

Sillybilly said:

Our is brilliant. It’s 11kw so really throws out the heat. To be honest it’s better than most of the rubbish that’s on telly. I find myself staring at it for ages. We get a lorry load of seasoned logs from a wood yard on the island. Fortunately we’ve got a massive log store in the garden so we can store a whole winter’s worth. Like everything else, the cost has risen (from £110 to £120 last year and now £130).  We did buy a bulk sale load of compressed sawdust logs from Lekto (the market leader in these things). They are excellent products. Mix half a heat log with normal logs and away you go. But they hiked the price for a box of 10 from £22 to £29 the other week so they can f*** right off!  Parallels to our ticket pricing strategy anyone?

Absolutely. If you're into that mindfulness stuff that they have now, this is ideal.
Don't forget to have a bottle of decent red and some good cheese to hand.

Also, it's worth getting a flue thermometer which is super cheap, and a moisture meter to check your logs before you put them on. But don't leave it on top of the burner, it will go all Salvador Dali and stop working

Hal1x said:

robinofottershaw said:

We use kiln dried logs. We have 3 log burners in our house but in the two years we have lived in this house we have only used one of them and then only on high days and holidays. Aim to use them more this winter rather our electric underfloor central heating.

Three log burners!, how environmentally unfriendly, you must think wood grows on trees.

On a serious note, I actually agree and until now we have not used log fires extensively, partly because you read about the potential harmful effects on health from log burners. We have neighbours who use their’s extensively.

We are the third owners of our house, which was built in 2010. Exterior of the house is traditional Cotswold stone (required in order to get planning permission) but inside is modern with stone tiled floors, underfloor heating, triple glazing etc, so very warm and doesn’t really need the log burners which I guess were installed largely for aesthetic reasons rather than any need. Up until now we have only used the log burner in the entrance hall but given current utility prices might start using the fire in the living room this winter.

We do have a wood directly behind the house so have a ready supply of kindling when the wind blows hard.😉

Modern log burners have a limit on how much you can damp them down to minimise carbon monoxide emissions.  In my experience it means kiln dried logs burn too fiercely, you can't damp down the fire enough to let it tick over. Before we moved we had an old solid steel Swedish burner that you could close right down at night and it was still alive next morning.  Seems modern burners have been adapted to prevent this because of the toxic gases this causes.  Anyway in our burner it works much better with ordinary seasoned logs with 15% - 20% moisture so they burn more gently. Logs which have been in the house drying out for months with almost zero moisture just flare up and burn away in minutes. 

Have access to felled timber including coppiced birch and happy that it's far better for the environment than gas and coal extraction.

Just out of interest, how long dio people leave putting the last log of the night on, before they go to bed?

Lekto Woodfuels have just announced a further 10-15% price rise from I November.  This is on top of their 27% rise last month.  Greedy barstewards.  That's the end of my custom and, I suspect, many others.

eaststandmike said:

I just used to use kiln dried logs I bought by the ton. All those fancy gimmicks that claim they burn longer etc never worked for me and are very expensive compared to real wood. 

Likewise - kiln dried hardwood, delivered loose on a low loader. Good exercise to shift it all to the garage and stack it, although I get him to drop it as close as possible! 

Bit of kindling and a couple of firelighters and it's roaring in minutes. Haven't had it going yet but will likely fire it up for the first fire of the autumn/winter at the weekend.

KBslittlesis said:

Mendonca In Asdas said:

Just out of interest, how long dio people leave putting the last log of the night on, before they go to bed?

I’m a bit of a night owl & himself tends to put the last one on about 10pm.
Its usually out by the time I’m going up about midnight 1ish.

And get a fan to put on top.
Brilliant wee things, chucks the heat further out into the room so you don’t have to sit on top of the fire.

I had no idea these fans were a thing until I read your post. going to look to get one now

rina said:

KBslittlesis said:

Mendonca In Asdas said:

Just out of interest, how long dio people leave putting the last log of the night on, before they go to bed?

I’m a bit of a night owl & himself tends to put the last one on about 10pm.
Its usually out by the time I’m going up about midnight 1ish.

And get a fan to put on top.
Brilliant wee things, chucks the heat further out into the room so you don’t have to sit on top of the fire.

I had no idea these fans were a thing until I read your post. going to look to get one now

Do let me know what you think ♥️

eaststandmike said:

I keep piling the logs on until the early hours, no point going to bed early as the twat next door is up playing his ukulele until 2am 

Buy yourself a drum kit 

Nice little 3 log smoulder till bed ..