Any stove installation experts out there?

[bobby spray]

Hello, I am thinking of getting a stove installed in my living room. The room is pretty big – 5m x 7.5m and a 3.5m ceiling height. It has single glazed sash bay windows approx. 9ft high. It’s never been that warm and the gas heating struggles to cope with the extreme weather we get here in Scotland. By my own calculations, the stove, for that room, should be in the region of 10kW. The issue is that the installer that I have spoken to says that to adhere to regulations and for a stove of that size, and for any stove over 5kW, he’ll have to knock a ventilation hole in my outside wall! I realise that this might be appropriate for a hermetically sealed modern house but my house was built in 1890 and is draughty as hell. Has anyone any experience in this?



TIA

Bobby

 

[paulc]

The installer is indeed correct in wanting to install a vent. The other option is to find a stove that uses a duct to bring air in from outside (room sealed ?). In a detached property, this isn't generally a problem, but with a semi, you will probably need to lift floorboards and do some heavy digging through the side of the chimney breast & hearth.
I had to have a small vent drilled through the outside wall. Went for the smallest I could find that met the minimum cross sectional area required. Found quite a bit of road noise came through the hole, even after fitting some internal baffles. Currently plugged with a wad of loft insulation (so don't tell anyone).

 

[noj]

My registered installers were happy to put a small vent into the floor rather than going through the wall. I neglected to mention that there's only a one inch gap before the poured concrete beneath that and no air bricks! All officially signed off.

 

[fernicarry]

Our stove takes its primary (or is that secondary?) air direct through a duct cored into the back of the fire opening. Obviously you need it to be on an outside wall for that to work. It does also take a small amount of air from the room but that usually only needs to be open when first lit.

The Baxi Burnall that it replaced took its air from below the suspended floor through a (probably asbestos) duct built into the constructional hearth. That got repurposed for the boiler pipework.

You are probably right that a typical period house has more than enough opportunistic ventilaton to keep the stove safe and happy but when ours is on full chat (12kW-ish) it does consume a lot of air and you don't want that air to be rolling across the floor towards the stove.

 

[housewinnie]

You may find it worth taking a chance on a 5kw stove then you won’t need a vent. We have a small aga multi stove and it don’t half pump out the heat. Smaller room than yours but heats the hall downstairs too.