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Green Cottage: eco-renovation of a 100-year-old Victorian end-terrace
Posted by Chris Vernon on June 14, 2008 - 10:00am in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: electricity, renewable energy, renewables, solar house, solar power, wood [list all tags]
This is a guest post from Andy Hunt (solar_bud on The Oil Drum). It's an inspiring account of what can be done today with a modest property to live efficiently and maintain a degree of energy security.
Vital Statistics
Our house was built around 1900. It is an end-terrace house with 2 bedrooms, located in an inner-city area in Bury, Lancashire, UK. Our household comprises me and my partner, with no children, and we live in the property all year round. No planning restrictions are in effect in our area.
Wood burning stove with back boiler.
Annual Energy Use
We use around 3200 units of electricity annually from the grid, although this is expected to fall once we install the second stage of our solar PV system. This includes all cooking, as we don’t have a gas supply, and is about average for our part of the country.
Our heating system is 100% wood and solar fuelled, so we don’t tend to count heating in our energy consumption. We go through quite a few logs over the course of a winter though!
We use a ‘green’ electricity tariff, initally Npower “Juice” but now Good Energy as it's 100% renewable unlike Juice.
About Us and Why We Did It
I work as Sustainability Manager for a local Council, and have a long-standing interest in energy issues, climate change and fossil fuel depletion. I have always wanted to live in an eco-house, and my home renovation project of our very ordinary Victorian terraced house has made that dream a reality.
My partner comes from a family whose motto is “mend and make do”, and she has grown up with solid fuel heating all her life. She is very practically minded, the daughter of an electrician, so her ideas and practical suggestions have been a very valuable part of our ‘green’ experiment.
Heating
The existing gas central heating system was converted to run on wood fuel and solar power.
I hired a plumber who disconnected the existing radiator system from the (cheap and low-quality) gas combination boiler which was running it when I bought the house, and connected it up to a new wood burning stove which was installed in the fireplace in the living room. The stove has a back boiler which runs two pipe loops – one connects the stove to a dual-coil hot water storage cylinder in the bedroom directly above, and the other connects the stove to the radiators in the house.
The hot water storage cylinder is heated by convection from the back boiler, and on the return pipe from the cylinder to the stove is a pipe thermostat. When the temperature of the return pipe (and hence the water in the cylinder) reaches 60°C, the thermostat starts a circulation pump in the radiator circuit, which pumps hot water around the house. This ensures that the hot water cylinder is heated as a priority, and is kept hot at all times.
When choosing a wood stove, it is essential to choose the right type for the application and situation. An ordinary room heater stove will provide warmth and cooking facilities in an emergency such as a power cut. A larger stove with a back boiler like ours can also run a central heating and hot water system, but is more expensive to install.
If you live in a smoke control area, you must legally install a stove which is exempt from the Clean Air Act by DEFRA for burning wood in a smoke control area. Most stove manufacturers make such models, but at the time of writing the only wood stove with a back boiler which is CAA-exempt is the Dunsleyheat Yorkshire stove.
In the summer, the cylinder is heated by a solar hot water system, which is plumbed into the lower coil in the hot water storage cylinder – the wood stove is plumbed into the top coil. Our solar hot water system is by Zen Eaga Solar – it is a flat plate system, and works well. Most solar hot water system installers will provide a dual-coil cylinder as part of the installation. The cost of the cylinder is actually a substantial part of the cost of the whole system.
Power Generation
The house uses solar photovoltaic panels and a battery back-up system for power security and low carbon emissions.
In the house there are two ring-mains - one which serves the heavy duty appliances in the kitchen such as the hob, cooker and washing machine, and a second one which serves the rest of the house.
When considering solar PV for electricity generation, I didn't like the idea that I would still lose power during a power cut if the system was grid-connected. So I went for a hybrid system, which doesn't feed excess power into the grid but stores it in batteries, will work during a power cut for several days, and can also take mains electricity when it is available.
We currently have 330Wp of solar PV (to be expanded to around 700-900Wp soon), connected to a 720Ah battery bank and an inverter-battery charger, which serves my second (low power) ring main. The inverter/charger is a Powermaster 1.5kW pure sine wave inverter which can take a 240V mains input, or can run off the batteries and solar PV in the absence of mains electricity. It was originally designed for use aboard boats, and so we just use the grid as our ‘shore power’ equivalent. Interesting to think of our home as a ship afloat at sea when we are running off-grid! Our PV panels are currently two Schüco 165Wp polycrystalline panels – the next stage will see an additional 165Wp Schuco panel plus a 200W Kyocera polycrystalline panel, bringing our installed capacity to 695Wp. The 30A solar controller on the inverter/charger can take up to 1kWp of solar, so even then there will still be room for another 200-300Wp of PV, as long as we can find the roof space for it!
In the summer the system will run for around a week at a time before the batteries need to be recharged from the mains. Further PV addition should improve this so that it runs pretty much constantly over the summer months. In the winter when the PV isn't generating as much, the batteries can be charged from the mains and in UPS mode the inverter will switch over to the batteries during a power cut, which will last us for 3 days or so, giving us desk lamps, TV (using a laptop and TV card), central heating pump, solar pump and general electrical gadgetry which makes life much more bearable during a power cut.
The only things we can't use during a power cut are the heavy-duty kitchen appliances. The fridge can be plugged into the off-grid ring main during a power cut with an extension reel.
Batteries and inverter.
Water and Sewage
We have only made fairly basic water efficiency improvements at Green Cottage - the installation of two water butt in the garden holding around 450 litres, a dual-flush toilet and spray nozzles on the bathroom taps all help to reduce water consumption.
We do have a dishwasher and a washing machine but they are both 'A' rated for energy and water efficiency. Studies have shown that dishwashers make more efficient use of water and electricity than washing up by hand, and we have a manual ‘wonder washer’ for clothes which we can use during power cuts. Our dishwasher is a very new model, and the instructions give details on how to connect it up to make use of solar-heated hot water. However, we tend to use our solar hot water for baths and showers only, so the dishwasher is actually connected to the cold water supply in our case. Not ideal, but with British summers the way they are, we need all the solar power we can get just for washing ourselves!
Insulation
We have had the standard 250mm of loft insulation installed under a Scottish Power discount insulation scheme a few years ago - most utilities offer these schemes under the Government's Energy Efficiency Commitment. You can find out which are the cheapest schemes in your area by telephoning your local Energy Efficiency Advice Centre on 0800 512 012.
Unfortunately our house does not have a wall cavity and so we can't install cavity wall insulation. We have no intention of getting external insulation done - far too expensive! The nice thick Accrington brick walls of our home give a good thermal mass though.
Summer Cooling
The high thermal mass of our old house helps to keep it cool in the summer.
We are lucky in that our living room is on the North-facing side of the house, but houses the wood stove which heats the house in the winter.
This arrangement means that in the winter, the living room is the warmest room in the house, and in the summer it is deliciously cool, even in the hottest weather. The high thermal mass of the house means that the North side stays very cool, like a larder, even whilst the back of the house is baking in the midday sun.
Lighting
All the lights in the house are Compact Fluorescent Lamps, otherwise known as energy-saving bulbs.
We tend only to use low-power desk lamps rather than the 'big light' in each room. As the desk lamps run from the solar PV/battery system, this means that we get free electricity to run the house's lighting, and also that we have lighting even during a power cut.
Appliances
All appliances are energy efficient appliances, under the European rating system.
The kitchen appliances are 'A' rated, with the exception of the fridge, which although old is still working. Rather than scrap it and buy a new one, we invested in a 'Savaplug', which regulates the motors on old fridges and reduces their energy consumption.
We watch television on a laptop computer with a LCD monitor, and a TV card, which uses very little electricity. The same computer doubles up as our stereo CD player and DVD player, which means we have very little entertainment technology clutter.
Even with 100% electric cooking, our electricity bill is very low, typically around £5-6 weekly.
One measure we have recently taken to cut our electricity consumption is a flat-bottomed kettle to go on our wood stove – electric kettles use huge amounts of electricity, and our £3 aluminium stove-top kettle from Ikea will hopefully make a significant difference to our electricity bill!
The Garden
Although just a small terraced house back garden, ours is crammed with food plants, biodiversity and storage areas.
Our back garden is South-facing, and has been planted up according to Permaculture design principles.
A huge variety of perennial fruits and berry plants are crammed into a small area, with an additional raised bed for growing annual vegetables.
Perennials include: strawberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants, blueberries, a grape vine, apple tree, pear tree, raspberries, cranberries, blackberries and hazelnuts.
We have tried a variety of different things in the raised beds – the most successful to date have been carrots, pak choi, tomatoes (although we have had problems ripening them as they grow against an East-facing wall), French beans, onions, potatoes and a pumpkin which we have just harvested. We also had a butternut squash plant in the miniature greenhouse which did very well, although the pot it was in turned out to be too small for it in the end.
A storage space for logs, a bunker for kindling, a small lean-to greenhouse and a table and benches for enjoying the sun are all crammed into this typical small terraced house back yard. Space has even been found for a network of four small wildlife ponds and wildlife areas amongst the food growing, and the garden has a significant population of frogs, which is good because slugs and snails are a big problem. We use copper ‘slug rings’ to try to keep small plants safe, but it’s a constant battle, and I may well try other approaches in the future such as beer traps.
Conclusion
It has taken a good few years to get from standard gas-heated end-terrace to low-carbon eco-cottage, a lot of hard work, improvisation and a reasonable chunk of hard-earned cash, but we love the end result. The old gas combi used to really struggle to heat the house, but the wood stove system warms the brickwork through, and we are really cosy. It's also great not having to use any kind of heating in the summer, as the solar hot water system provides us with a cylinder full of free hot water, and even the solar pump runs on free electricity.
I'd like to thank Powerswitch for the inspiration, help and encouragement provided on their forums.
There's nothing quite like relaxing in a hot bath knowing it has been heated free of charge by the sun, and free veggies from our back garden taste so much better than from the supermarket. A couple more PV panels and we will be finished. And then, we might start looking for a small patch of woodland for our next project...
- - - - - - - - - - -
First published in Permaculture Magazine - solutions for sustainable living.
www.permaculture.co.uk
Wood burning stoves are great provided few other people have them. Unfortunately there's not a great deal of forest in the vicinity of Bury, so popularising this form of heating could lead to serious supply problems. No mention is made in the article of home insulation, a far more cost effective means of reducing fossil fuel consumption than expensive PV panels (especially near Manchester!)and without the abovementioned supply constraints of buringn wood. Would this lack of insulation be partly due to the age of the house? I guess it does not have a cavity wall. Unfortunately, this highlights the problem the UK has with greening its very old housing stock. The only way to insulate the walls of most pre-1920s housing stock is by building further internal walls, greatly reducing the living space, not to mention covering up all those "original features" that make the houses desirable in the first place. I fear that the best solution might not be to refurbish our old houses but pull them down, something that appals the aesthete in me.
Sorry to be so negative in view of all your hard work.
I've never heard of anyone building an extra internal wall for insulation, it seems a bit extream. If insulation is needed its added to the outside of the building but as the original poster said its expensive (for what it is).
In the UK out of a total generating capacity of around 75GW around 25GW is due to go out of commission by around 2015.
It takes years to build nuclear or coal, and the relatively intermittent wind power is supposed to be built off-shore, won't be ready by 2015 or even 2020, costs at least twice as much as nuclear power and still needs a lot of back up.
The governments plans, in so far as it has any, are to import gas which is not likely to be available and will cost a huge amount - and besides which we still have to build the stations.
Power cuts are inevitable and gas is also likely to be in short supply.
Under the circumstances extra internal walls sound like rather a good idea, even though many British homes are quite small and it would take another chunk out of the room inside, that will be the least of our worries.
As an experienced bricky I've never seen it done.
Its actualy more difficult than just reducing the internal room size and has more to do with damp building up within the cavity.
I have seen an extra skin of brickwork go up on the outside of existing buildings though. I would think that this is even more expensive than gluing the insulation to the outside wall and skimming it with render which is far more common.
I just read yesterday about the UKs upcomming energy problem. Arnt there several other European countries about to hit the same wall with decommisoning nuclear power plants and nothing to replace them?
I don;'t really know all the ins and outs - no-one would have considered doing it until recently.
Here is the stuff I was looking at:
http://www.celotex.co.uk/
Celotex Insulation | High Performance Thermal Insulation Boards
Or:
http://www.lafargeplasterboard.co.uk/products/concepts/thermal1.htm
Lafarge Plasterboard - Thermalcheck boards
Some of the versions have some stuff to keep the damp back.
My place has insulated cavity walls - any idea if that helps with the damp?
I did not really go into the full picture of how bad things are likely to be - we are also perhaps unlikely to get full gas supplies - at the moment we are running a £50 billion current account deficit and a 3.5% budget deficit - the last recession we went into it running a 2% surplus and still ended up way in deficit.
That was without peak oil.
Things here are going to get really hairy in my opinion, with no heating or light for long periods.
I don't know as much about the situation of other European countries, obviously.
However, in a brief run-down Holland and Germany both have a housing stock which uses around three times less energy than ours, as they are properly insulated.
Germany is trying to close it's nuclear plant, but will probably have to change its mind.
I don't know how the schedule there is for plant retiring.
France is running about a 2% budget deficit.
They have 59 nuclear reactors which produce 80% of their electricity, are vigorously installing wind, are planning to install 5 million solar thermal water heaters, and are installing 50,000 air heat pumps a year.
They also have substantial wood resources, and many in the country can use that for heating.
For transport they are rapidly installing urban light rail.
Scandinavia is also well placed.
Southern Europe has poor finances, and will likely in a recession not be able to stay in the Euro.
Spain and Greece are heavily dependent on the tourist industry, and with cheap flights on the way out, to go with the housing slump and their awful finances, are arguably in a worse position than Britain.
In summary, Britain is ill-placed to weather the storm, much worse than it's nearest neighbours.
Dave,
Can I gently encourage you to use paragraphs? They really do help with organizing what you read. Without them, one can get lost as to when a point is done.
Cheers
Thanks for the reminder - I was dredging so deep to try to remember the little I know about the obsolescence rates of German col plants and so on that I forgot! ;-)
OK I checked out those two sites and think this might be a good idea. I couldnt find any prices but its possible to internaly insulate 1 room at a time this way and therfore not break your budget. I would definatly start with the living room.
A standard British cavity, for buildings 20 years old will have been insulated. Old building possibly not but as long as the cavity is sealed well you wont have problems. If you have problems you would already see the damp on your internal walls. I only ever worked on one job in South London where the walls were constructed for thermal efficiency. They were 200mm thick compared to the standard 60mm.
I'm living in Holland myself but dont have a good grasp of the language yet so its difficult to follow whats happening. I know that recently they began a big project up in Amsterdam to double glaze thousands of council homes.
My personal situation is not so good. I live on a houseboat constructed entirely of wood except the metal hull. An average wall is 30mm wood/60mm insulation/20mm wood. The roofs are flat and of the same thickness and all the windows are single panes. My propane gas bill for heating was astronomical this last winter even with an efficient wood burner in the living room. My only advantage is I can collect a lot of free wood from along the canal. I guess this year I'm going to need a lot more :/
Unless your boat is very large, I doubt it will apply to your situation, but for those boats which have generator I am wondering whether a heat pump is a possible solution?
Certainly on land a body of water is the ideal heat source for a system - can anyone make some sense of this idea?
That would depend on how you went about it. Some variation on this idea (Not new, apparently, but this is the only version I've actually seen plans and final products for. I've seen references to "envelope" design as early as the '70's.) should be effective. I am planning to incorporate some version of this in a home if I build one.
http://www.enertia.com/Science/HowItWorks/tabid/68/Default.aspx
Cheers
Bill,
Pulling a lot of them down (14 million?) and starting again has been suggested in the 40% House report
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/40house.php
I can't see this being particularly popular.
I would urge the use of internal insulation - you may think you're losing space, but you'll gain a lot of comfort. My spare bedroom has solid brick walls and is very small (so small that I've had to have a specially short mattress made). I've put 50mm insulation in the walls, but this enables me to actually put a bed against them and feel cosy without having any heating on. Better a small cosy room than a slightly larger uncomfortable one.
As for 'internal walls' for insulation, I have done this in my neighbour's cellar. I've put 50mm rockwool against the cellar wall and then used metal office stud partitioning framing inside to hold the vapour barrier and plasterboard. I didn't want to use wood because of damp.
As for 'original features', replacement ornamental plaster mouldings are available in B&Q and I even got my mother to make plaster of paris copies of some of the 'modillions' (there's a word or you) that decorate our hall ceiling.
BobE
Re my previous post, my apologies! You do mention insulation (albeit briefly), and the lack of a cavity wall. I'm not convinced of the benefits of high thermal mass walls, typical of old houses. High thermal mass means they soak up a lot of energy in cold weather!
Hi bill h,
Thanks for your interest. Firstly, there's no way I am getting external thermal cladding, it costs far more than I can possibly afford, and I think I am fairly typical of terraced home owners in not having thousands of pounds to spend on thermal cladding. You may well be right about thermal mass, but fortunately or unfortunately that is what I am stuck with. You have to remember that this is an eco-renovation, not a new build. I could be guilty of 'looking on the bright side', possibly. As for demolition, that is certainly an option that many councils have taken in many cases across the country - but I doubt it would be resource efficient to extend it to every single Victorian terrace in the country, to be honest.
I have not written much about insulation because what I have written contains all the salient facts for my particular house. This isn't a 'best practice' paper, it is about what I myself have done! Although obviously it could be replicable. The insulation scheme I took advantage of is subsidised by the energy companies, a route which most people in my situation would go down, and which I have mentioned in the article. I could certainly have super-insulated the loft with 500mm+, but I would not have been able to take advantage of the subsidised scheme, and I think many people in my situation would probably do the same. As such it's probably a good case study of what the UK government thinks is satisfactory in terms of insulation, rather than 'best practice' - if you see what I mean.
Regarding your other points, they are fair points. When I posted a link to this article on another website, I included the following 'disclaimer':-
"There are a few caveats here, not everyone could use wood fuel heating as there isn't enough of it. But for terraced houses it might be OK, as they have chimneys and are suited to solid fuel heating. Bigger homes would probably benefit from heat pumps or similar, which just need a bit of electricity to drive them.
It's not a perfect solution either - my PV system is undersized and I will need to add more panels to give me enough power to run the things I need to run, which will mean more cost. And electric cooking is not the most carbon-efficient, although you can get induction hobs which are more efficient than normal ones and we're on a 100% 'green' tarriff for the grid electricity we do use.
If the sun doesn't shine, that means tepid showers rather than a nice hot bath when you feel like it - not something everyone would want."
I would add to this that my supply of logs comes from a local tree surgeon for whom it is waste wood - I have done a little research into this and there is a lot of slack yet to be taken up in this area, including huge quantities of waste wood from council operations - something which is true of pretty much every borough. An alternative to wood heating could possibly have been an air source heat pump, something which National Energy Action (UK fuel poverty organisation) have recently successfully tested in terraced homes, but I would then have needed either underfloor heating or a new set of convecting radiators. In any case, when I was doing the renovation there were no domestic size air source heat pumps on the market so it wasn't an option. So logs we have.
We do go through a LOT of logs though - if I was eco-renovating a terrace for sale, I think I would do it differently - I would keep the gas central heating and just install a room heater wood stove. There is anecdotal evidence of people reducing their gas heating bill by up to 2/3 just through the use of a room heater stove (which of course works in a power cut).
I could have kept my hob connected to my original gas supply (which would have been more carbon efficient than moving to electricity, and would still have worked in a power cut unlike my eventual set-up), but I didn't really want a gas supply coming into the house for just a hob and nothing else, especially in view of the fact that I use solid fuel heating in winter. During power cuts we have cooked on the wood stove though.
It would probably be a more efficient use of the energy my small amount of PV generates to have a grid-connected inverter, although that wouldn't have given me the security from power cuts that my current set-up with a few batteries has. Some people I have spoken to are unconvinced of my need for batteries - we shall see. They will run such things as the solar pump, central heating pump, all my desk lamps, internet, TV etc etc during a power cut though, so life could be a bit more bearable if we start getting them regularly.
I'm sure there are plenty more things wrong which could be better, but I can't think of any more just at the minute!
Oh, except our bath, which is a big and comfortable corner bath, and as such takes a lot of water to fill. We always say it's a water-saving bath though - even though it takes more water, you can get 2 people in it, so per person it's probably quite efficient! :-)
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your post, especially the electricity back-up provisions.
I renovated 3 houses in Winnipeg Canada in the 1980's, using an available government subsidy. All were 3 story brick, build about 1900-1910. The first thing we did was put 60cm insulation in ceiling, 10cm against walls of basement by adding 4''studs and replacing windows.It seems you have single glazed aluminum. These are usually very poor, leak air and conduct heat. We replaced old single glazed windows with double glazed insulated core wood casement windows, which shut air-tight but can open fully in summer. We also replaced doors with insulated core doors, with draft stoppers. A lot of heat escapes from air-exchange, in most houses its like having one window fully open. If you feel cold drafts around windows or doors when wood stove is on, you may be having one full air change every 15 mins.
An air-tight house ( one air exchange every 2-3 hrs) will not allow a wood stove to draw so you have to have an cold air inlet to the back of the stove to replace hot air lost.
On two of the houses I did add internal wall insulation( 10cm), but this was the most expensive, not economic if you do not control drafts. We found we did not have to turn on heat until outside temperature was about -5C, so not sure how much savings you would get burning wood, if house is draft free. Its also a lot more pleasant. Window replacements are expensive but can do over several years, one or two at a time.
Back in the mid 1990's I rennovated a victorian terrace. If you strip the old plaster back to the brickwork and then fix insulated plasterboard the space loss is minimal. I worked in 700 square feet of plasterboard with 40mm polyurethene insulation. As for thermal mass the internal walls and chimney blocks provided sufficient heat capacity
And history shows that big thick walls are just what people choose if they build their own homes in cold areas unhampered by planning regulations. Often to save on wall material they'd build the house half into the ground, so that the ground would act as a "large thermal mass".
For example, below is an Iron Age hut in Britain, similar ones were built in Germany, Scandanavia and Russia right up until the Middle Ages. You can see it has quite a thick wall, in
They didn't live on an earthern floor, they had a wooden floor a couple of feet above it, between the wood and the earth they had straw, which as it decayed over winter helped heat the place.
If you ever camp out overnight, what you find is that the earth itself doesn't change much in temperature. It warms up a bit during the day, and then slowly releases this heat overnight. It takes some months of winter and snow before the earth will freeze.
However, if this earth is associated with a house, it won't freeze. In Germany with their "passivhaus" design, what they've found is that if you insulate the thing enough, just the heat from the bodies of the people in it is enough to keep it at an even temperature. Adults radiate about 100W of heat. That's not a lot, but it's enough if the place is very well-insulated. Designers of shopping malls and cinemas have to account for the people in buildings and rooms in terms of keeping an even temperature in the places. A typical cinema seating 400 people has the equivalent of 40,000W of heating, that's like 40 of these,
It's possible to use this in our favour as well as have to accomodate for it. If you can insulate your home sufficiently, human body heat will go a long way to reducing how much artificial heating you need.
You can believe large thermal masses help in this, or not, as you wish. But the fact is that people built homes in cold climates with large thermal masses for thousands of years and managed to survive. You can learn from history, or deny it as you wish.
Hello, as with everything else, looking at just one element doesn't tell you much. Think of a log home with clay between the logs, not well fitted. In summer, this is probably not a bad configuration, but winters would likely be cold any distance from the fire due to drafts, etc.
Now, take that same home and have finished, tongue-in-groove, 4x4 beams then you've got the beginnings of a different story. Use some kind of glue or other sealant, compress the logs together like they do straw bales, seal the corners well and have a well-designed, sealed roof, passive solar front to the structure and - viola! - you just might have quite a little home.
Cheers
Andy - one regulation I've come across in the UK on wood burners is the requirement to have a structural hearth extending for 2 ft beyond the front of the stove.
This to my mind is totally and utterly idiotic like most else that is going on in the UK right now. The hearth below a stove does get hot - but nowhere near combustion point. In front of the stove it only gets warm. The danger of course is that a burning log falls out, so it makes sense to have a decent stone hearth (floating) in front of the door to protect against this real hazard. But I don't see it is necessary to have that hearth extend all the way down to the Earth's mantle.
Are you able to advise on the regulations and what you think of them.
Hi Euan, I can't honestly say I've heard of that bit of regulation, I'll check with some colleagues who work in building control. Mine is on a big concrete plinth so plenty of room around it, might be more by default than by design though.
Will get back to you on that one if OK!
Euan, I've 2 wood stoves and while the hearth extends 2ft (60cm) or more in front of one, I don't think it's quite as much for the other (btw both were installed by certified wood stove installer who was very well prepared re regulations i.e. chimney liner etc).
Both the stoves stand on legs well above the hearths (as does the stove in picture at top of this article). I've never known the hearth to be anything more than slightly warm, easily bearable to the hand. Reasons for this include the obvious (heat rises!) and my practice of keeping a decent bed of ashes under the fire which helps retain heat and direct it outwards / upwards.
I agree with your thoughts, sounds like yet another 'nanny state' job!
There's a lot of fear of house fires about. When we signed our lease, one of the conditions on it was that we wouldn't have any wood fires for heating and cooking. Some older chimneys have decayed a bit and would be unsafe to burn in without repair, some Victorian-era fireplaces were designed for coal not wood, and are quite shallow. So those could be reasons wood-burning gets banned in particular homes, but our unit doesn't even have a fireplace, which suggests it's a general ban rather than looking at the condition of each place...
Here Down Under house fires are started quite often because of electric heaters, people do things like put synthetic blankets over them, or stick them near curtains, the things short out and send sparks everywhere, and so on. So probably landlords and the various authorities imagine wood fires would be even more dangerous, thus various regulations.
Euan,
The dimensions of the hearth are shown on Page 32 of the Building Regulations Part J
It's not quite so severe as 600mm, a minimum of 225mm for a closed stove, or 300mm for an open stove (or a closed one that is used in open mode).
Note that if you have an existing fireplace that the hearth should protrude at least 500mm from the existing chimney breast.
I met this requirement by using 600mm square stone effect slabs from the local DIY store.
These regulations have been derived over the years as the best practices to avoid the risk of fire. Having recently witnessed foam filled living room furniture burn (outside) - I now have a much greater respect for fire safety.
2020
To all above posters- "nanny job"? WOW you cannot fart here in Oregon, (usa) without a permit.
Wood stoves must be UL listed, DEQ( department of environmental quality) approved, high efficiency types - old unapproved ones are illegal to install let alone sell even used.
36 " back space from a combustible wall. May be reduced to 18" with a masonry wall behind if it has a 1" airspace and holes near the base to allow air flow behind it. Clearance 18" from each side. Hearth area must be masonry or other "approved" "rated" material. All must be permitted and inspected.
Excellent article.
We will never achieve the level of independence the author has managed, due to our being old gits, but we are part way there and this writing encourages us to go further, Thanks
Thanks for the story, Andy. I might get to read the whole thing later on. (Busy Day)
Just wanted to mention, as regards a modest property-base, that a Permaculture fellow I spoke with last night says he can basically feed himself (Vegan) with what he grows on a quarter-acre, while he has 3 acres and is going to plant more of it for CSA and other sales/bartering.
The discussion (Oil Awareness Meetup in Portland, Maine) involved the UK Transition Town concept, and his slant on that was not to get 'too organized', hence homogenized into such an 'ism framework, but to let people find their niche' areas, and they would naturally develop networks with others to fill in the gaps in what they produced. That, anyway, has been his experience. Someone is raising chickens (many someones, probably), someone else angles towards tinctures, herbal medicines, etc.. someone keeps a Truck or Tractor that you can swap for services, etc.. He has grown Buckwheat, and discovered that the 'chaff' is highly valued by people growing Roses, and this scrap material goes for $30/bag.
Bob
That is really useful information. I can imagine that some specialization works best. This is all fascinating stuff. We are wrinklies just beginning to get the message in upstate NY and we've got a long way to go.
Karen -
I agree with you assessment of the situation in upstate NY. What are your experiences with building codes etc. ?
Here in the Hudson Valley I am continually astounded by the ease in which 5000 sq ft McMansions are approved and built. Yet try to build something less than 1000 sq ft or with some alternative building method (straw bale, yurts etc.) and you're put through the ringer to try to get approval.
Andy,
An excellent description of your steps towards fossil fuel independence.
My partner and I are in a similar situation, a 1905 semi-detached house with 9" solid brick walls, and we re proceeding along the same lines to achieve some level of independence.
As you will be aware, it is a trade off between budget and what can practically be done within a property of such constructional constraints.
65% of the UK housing stock was built before 1960, and these traditional built houses are more likeky to have chimneys and the relative ease of converting to wood fired heating. For houses without a suitable flue, the expense of fitting one is likely to be the greatest deterrent to investing in wood heat. I suspect that only 20% of all UK households would choose to follow this route - despite the rising costs of domestic fuel.
Although we installed a condensing gas boiler and UFH in the summer of 2005, which slashed our gas consumption, we have subsequently installed a woodstove with back boiler, and this coming winter we expect to make the transition to wood-fired heating. We have retained the gas hob and oven, for convenience and these only amount to perhaps 5% of our overall gas usage.
We have held back on renovating the upstairs of the house, with the intention of adding 50mm of internal insulation (Celotex, Kingspan) to the external facing walls, plasterboarding and skimming with finishing coat. The upstairs ceilings will be similarly insulated.
We have halved our gas consumption from 28,000kWh in 2000/2001 and reduced the electricity consumption to 2800kWh - even though I work from home and run an office that uses about 2 - 3 kWh per day.
Not having to commute has saved a considerable amount of diesel mileage, and we do about 6000 miles per year, sharing the small car for short or economy trips and taking my van only when the nature of the load requires it - such as collecting firewood.
I have a 3kW Lister back-up generator, 108V 160h battery bank and 5kW inverter in my garden workshop, which runs on waste vegetable oil, but I am in the process of converting this to wood gas (from tree surgery waste) because of the transient nature of WVO.
I intend to install some pV in order to offset some of the power that my home-office consumes. This hopefully will result in a 25 to 30% reduction in power consumption from the grid. I will not be attempting to achieve grid tie, because of the current cost of the equipment and the poor rate offered for exported power.
The garden has seen some veg growing in previous years, and I have retained about 100' x 16' of garden for future veg plots, when I have more time to work on them.
Details of my approach are on my website at
powercubes.com/listers.html
2020
I have an office in a separate building which does not have a chimney. Our local (fully registered) wood stove installer suggested an internal stainless steel chimney exiting either through a wall or through the roof (which here in Scotland is a slate roof). Cost including small wood stove around £3000 i.e. $6k. As I talked to installer a few months ago I'd work with £3500 now but that's not a huge issue if one expects (as most here do) big electricity price hikes in future years (I quote electricity as there's no mains gas here but all energy costs are pretty certain to rise).
How much experience is there with Listers running on wood gas? I've been thinking about that but haven't seen anything definite.
Looking forward to playing with this myself.
Thanks for the article. It was very informative.
Our woodstove has the option of a clip-on back boiler, so I'd be interested in hearing everyone's views or experiences with them. I get the impression that they mightn't be the best thing for efficiency of burn, but that may not be the most important thing depending on the application.
As far as I am aware a stove with a back boiler is not as efficient as it can't achieve the same high burning temperatures as one without.
But if you want to heat a cylinder and radiators, nothing else will do unfortunately!
Excellent article by a thoughtful person trying to make the best of marginal situation. It very clearly illustrates the problems of retrofitting old dwellings. I was stunned by Andy's comment of being unable to insulate the wall cavities which I assume therefore must be masonry? The key to post peak oil housing is of course not just insulation but super insulation ideally placed OUTSIDE of thermal mass.Thermal mass is your friend if it's insulated and your implacable enemy if not. I would like Andy to explain why he cannot insulate his wall cavities because that seems like a fatal flaw of the building. IF he does not have masonry walls he should be able to insulate his walls. If not he should consider building a properly insulated internal wall system within his external walls. Since they would not need to be structural, the cost would be modest. Obviously he would lose some interior space. He might even just do this on the key areas he lives in like the LR and kitchen/bath and omit other rooms like the bedrooms which can be left uninsulated Another key concept is orientation of the long axis of the house due south. Perhaps he might consider a solar greenhouse on his south side which could contain a thick insulated solar slab which could store heat for days. We live in a frigid part of the United states and regularly see -30 to -40 every winter and have seen below -60 F. My solar room heats our log cabin on sunny days when it's not bitterly cold and is generally the most popular room in our house except in the summer when it is packed with growing vegetables.What on earth is a sustainability manager by the way?