Retrofit Boiler Stoves
Not all boiler stoves start off as a wood burning boiler stove, many manufacturers make retrofit boilers which fit inside you current stove enabling you to add a boiler at a later date, this is fairly common. Manufacturers to watch our for are
- Charnwood
- Clearview
- Woodwarm
These 3 manufacturers all do a retrofit boiler options
Woodwarm do a large range offering a large range of outputs.
However, if you are looking for a central heating wood burning boiler stove, you need to pay close attention to the outputs, the main reason is you ideally want the vast majority of heat going to water and not to the room, this allows you to control where you distribute your heat, you only normally get this with a dedicated boiler stove.
With retrofit back boilers, boilers tend to offer 50% or 30% to water where a dedicated boiler stove gives around 80% to water. People often say but I want more heat in the living room where the stove is, but remember you still have a radiator or you should have. The room / to water ratio becomes more important in summer/ milder periods of the year where you still want heating for towel rails, hot water etc but you don’t want to overheat the room where the stove is. Most customers feel there is a compromise getting the right balance to water / to room while getting a stove with the right appearance, but its important to get the whole package right. Which brings us onto the wet side of boiler stoves, all our boiler stove installations are coupled with a thermal store, so whats are thermal store.
Wood fuel heating system picture, this picture is also very similar for log, chip and pellet boilers