Running Costs - what are they? : It is very difficult to find any advertised running costs for wood burning and when they are the costs quoted by many companies are based on buying wood in tonnes.

• Summary of typical costs involved between a wood burning stove and a flueless gas fire
  • Purchase of the Wood Burning or Multi Fuel Stove - £900
  • Installation including minimal flue work - £1000
  • Total 1off costs £1900
  • Running cost of a wood burning stove per year - £600
  • A wood burning stove will cost £2500 in the first year and £600 every year after. [after five years = £5500 in costs]
  • The running costs on a flueless gas fire are about £65/year with average usage [natural gas version]
  • A flueless gas fire will cost £799 and £65 every year after. [after five years = £1124 in costs]

Here is a typical scenario. You have been told that the best option to save money is to buy a wood burning stove. You search the internet and find lots of cheap stoves online and think it is a bargain. If you buy a Wood Burning Stove it is almost certain you will also need to buy and fit a flue liner to your chimney. The room must have a CO monitor installed. There must also be a hearth installed. The flue must be swept every year. This then makes it not as simple as was originally thought. The running costs of burning wood can be around £600/year. Compare this to a flueless gas fire of about £65/year.

Don't take our word for a recent article Wood Burning Stove - Running Costs and also Is Living with a Wood Burner Worth it – Money Wise. Articles which were published on the IDoStuff website.

There are also health risks to consider as recent newspaper articles have highlighted.

• RECENT PRESS ACTIVITY ON WOOD BURNING FIREPLACES AND STOVES:
  • DAILY MAIL - 8-2-2011: Wood-burning stoves 'can be as deadly as exhaust fumes'
  • SIXWISE - 7-2-2011: BEWARE: Your Fireplace or Wood Burning Stove May Be Harming Your Health
  • PULSE - 7-2-2011: Goodbye to wood-burning stoves.
  • GUARDIAN - 4-1-2010: The truth about wood burning stoves

RECENT GUARDIAN ARTICLE:

The truth about wood burning stoves - Phil Daoust

A woman I know simply will not shut up about her new wood burning stove. Its "fantastic", she says. You put on "one tiny log" and the whole house is roasting for the rest of the day. Its the "best thing she's ever bought". Rubbish. I've had one for three and a bit winters, and if you Are thinking of joining the club you ought to know the other side of the story.

• A wood burner will heat your whole home only if that home is tiny and heavily insulated. In my cold and mountainous bit of the world, where the temperature regularly hits -12C in winter, almost everyone has a stove, a great big pile of logs to feed it, and a chunk of forest to supply said woodpile. The first question locals ask when visiting a strange house is: "How do you heat this place?" If the answer is "wood", their second question is: "And what else?" My own supposedly wood-fired shack is habitable only thanks to four electric radiators and three paraffin heaters. And double-glazed.
• You cant run a stove on the odd branch picked up while walking the dog. Between December and March, you can easily get through 100 wheelbarrow loads of beech, oak or whatever. How much will it cost ready-chopped? Imagine 300 blue Ikea bags filled with £50 notes.
• Because most stoves will rarely burn unattended for more than four hours, and because fire-lighting becomes a more tedious chore by the day, your burner will dominate your life like a newborn baby. Every time you get up to pee during the night you will have to chuck a few more logs in, and if you don't get up during the night you will wake up shivering. Whenever you leave the house, you fret that you will return to a pile of ash that no amount of bellows-work will resuscitate. And if you socialise with other wood burner owners, evenings usually end by 11 with the words: "Oh my God, I've got to go and feed the stove." If there's one thing worse than some Pollyanna banging on about how much she loves her wood burner its a whole bunch of grumps moaning about how much they hate theirs.
• Read The Article

RECENT DAILY MAIL ARTICLE:

Wood-burning stoves 'can be as deadly as exhaust fumes' by producing smoke that can cause heart disease - By Daily Mail Reporter

But the smoke from wood-burning stoves or open fires is as dangerous to your health as breathing in emissions from a car exhaust, research has revealed. Inhaling the invisible particles in the smoke can lead to fatal heart disease and cancer, toxicology experts warn. Health risk? Inhaling the invisible particles in the smoke can lead to fatal heart disease and cancer, toxicology experts warn. Until recently, little was known about the potentially harmful effects of breathing in smoke produced by open fires and wood-burning stoves or boilers.But the research by Danish scientist Professor Steffen Loft suggests the tiny airborne specks in the smoke can be a silent killer because they are small enough to be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs.

Similar particles created by motor vehicle exhaust and coal-fired electricity plants have been linked to fatal heart disease, asthma, bronchitis, cancer and other health problems.

Professor Loft said: ‘The particles from wood smoke can certainly cause fatal heart or lung disease. In human cells that were exposed to them, substantial DNA damage and mutation took place. It was comparable to the effects of particles given off by traffic.’ The full scale of the risk is not yet known, he said, but pointed out that in developing countries where wood fires are used inside homes for cooking and as a heat source, the smoke is a major cause of disease. Individually the specks are too small to be seen by the naked eye, but together they are seen in the air as smoke.

Professor Loft’s research team analysed and compared particles in the air from a village in Denmark where most residents used wood stoves, to a neighboring rural area with few wood stoves, and to pure wood smoke particulate matter (WSPM), or the smoke specks themselves. According to the results, published in the Chemical Research in Toxicology journal, when WSPM was tested on human cells, it caused damage to DNA and inflammation as well as higher levels of cancer-causing carcinogens.

Professor Loft also found that in rural areas, wood smoke particles were
contaminating nearby fields of crops which, if eaten, caused DNA damage to liver cells.
In such areas, he said, people were already feeling the health impact. ‘I’ve heard many complaints from individuals upset about neighbours’ wood-burning stoves because they are causing them problems such as asthma,’ he added.

‘There are improvements being made to the wood stoves to cut the level of emission, but the most important thing is how people use them.’ By cutting up wood into small pieces, only using dry wood, and ensuring a good air supply to the combustion, dangerous particle emissions can be greatly reduced, he said.

READ THE ARTICLE

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