Wood Heaters

Originally posted by Taurisk ↑

sierra -one of my kids has reverse cycle A/C and they are very happy with it. It really does work - don't know how expensive it is to run.
Wood burning:
When I first bought this house 'in the woods' with trees in the grounds I thought of re-installing the flue, as it has a chimney but the roof has been closed over, but there was still 'the open fireplace' in the main living room, but it was blocked. I did a lot of research then on wood heaters, remembering the masonry/and tiled heaters from my native country, which do not pollute, but they have gone out of fashion there too.

In Finland they have a lot of beautiful soapstone and they export it and also produce stoves (based on the masonry model) from it. Soapstone occurs in Western Australia too (its mostly used for the production of talc), but no-one knows much about its other uses; - there could be a business opportunity here. I went in search of it and found a small community hall down south, which was built from soapstone and people just pointed to a field where they had 'found it - I didn't pursue it further. Soapstone retains the heat beautifully for a longish period of time and comes in a number of distinctive shades of green/grey to blue and brown.

There is also an imported stove brand called 'Jotul' which I was going to buy - it can be regulated so that most of the noxious gases are burnt off before escaping through the chimney stack and I believe some of the more modern (and local) brands do also have a way of regulating and getting a second burn-off.
I have found it frustrating to source a decent wood-burning stove, which is environmentally acceptable and which is also a reasonable price.

If you are handy (and have a big house to heat), maybe you could look up 'masonry stoves' - they are actually easy to build and there are good instructive U-tube videos on the internet. They do not need to be tiled with expensive tiles, but you can just make them from brick and plaster them AND they are environmentally the best thing, as you only need one heating per day and they will keep a house warm all day until the next morning. - You can also build benches round it .......Good Luck - you've got all summer to think about it!
Taurisk

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Hi Taurisk,

That post was about 18 months ago and I bought a Lopi wood heater soon after that. It's just finishing it's second winter duty cycle.
That's very interesting about soapstone. I've never seen it used but I do remember that talcum powder is now linked to cancer as a possible carcinogen so best be careful using it. Hopefully there are safe soapstones or it's a false alarm?