 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Although not really worried about a few hours of power cuts we have been thinking of an alternative heat source just for the front room for a while.
All our heating currently depends upon electricity with gas central heating and no other source. There is a fireplace in the room but it's closed off and not in use.
So it seems that if we discount using an electric fire we have the following choices -
Log burner but we have no free wood supply so would have to pay for our logs.
Smokeless fuel burner which is claimed to be cheaper than buying wood.
Gas fire.
Whichever we went for it would take some work to fit so don't want to go down a bad route. As regards cost to fit and cost to run which is likely the best option?
I'm erring towards gas as it's the cleanest option, quick to light and heat up, probably the easiest to fit and won't require we store fuel.
I've always had a gas fire.
My wife now refuses to put it on as she literally sees it as burning money.
It works fine, it's convenient, it looks nice and it pumps out loads of heat. I've no idea how cost effective/ efficient our current one is as it came with the house.
The bunker mentality part of my brain wants a coal/ smokeless fire instead. What's the chance of gas and electrical power cuts in the future?
The part of me that remembers getting paid 50p a week to get the coal in and watching my mum cursing the coal fire for any number of reasons stops me from getting it swapped.
Reasons for my mum's cursing included
A pigeon falling down the chimney.
The fire not lighting * 1,00,000
Someone (10 year old me) getting coal dust on the carpet* 1,000,000
The coal lorry not turning up one week
The fire going out at an inconvient time
The cost, when we went to a gas fire it was much cheaper to run
Cleaning the fire
Getting ashes on the carpet
The bunker mentality part of my brain wants a coal/ smokeless fire instead. What’s the chance of gas and electrical power cuts in the future?
This is me too, but I remember all the downsides as a kid as well as you.
Plus if no gas is getting through I suspect getting a delivery of coal/wood and/or it being nicked by desperate people is highly likely too.
I'm mainly looking to stick a bit of heat into the room for an hour or less rather than putting the whole central heating on.
I think gas fire and sod the cost might be the way to go.
If it's just for taking the chill off every now and then, and looking nice while on (with side bonus of working if everything else isn't), I'd recommend what we've got - a cheap stove with a bio-ethanol burner plonked inside. Needs no connecting to anything, no additional ventilation/flue/chimney, looks nice, gets properly hot. Downside is the bio-eth isn't the cheapest thing in the world and even the low-odor stuff does have a slight smell - nothing like a Calor gas fire though, or even as much as a log burner, if it comes to that.
.
A normal sized gas fire (4kw) cranked to max costs around 50p/hour to run, but probably reduces the gas use from your main boiler by a chunk too. It is burning money but it's not burning a lot of it 🙂
Op, check if you have a gas source near the fireplace from an old fire. If you don't then getting one there might be costly/messy
Log burner but we have no free wood supply so would have to pay for our logs.
Smokeless fuel burner which is claimed to be cheaper than buying wood.
Both spew out a huge amount of PM10s polluting the local environment. PM10s are pretty nasty, go straight into the blood stream via the lungs and can be carcinogenic. We've stopped using our log burner entirely.
PM10s dont cross the alveoli.
You're confusing them with PM2.5s which do.
A heated blanket or some self entertainment should see you right.