Steadily firming up the shopping list for our new house – here’s the latest list, with links. Kitchen Multi-fuel or Wood-Fired Range (possibly with Back Boiler), will need to be smokeless Various non-powered kitchen gadgets: Mouli, Hand-Powered Blender, Thermos Slow Cooker, Low-voltage (LED or Fluorescent) under-cabinet lighting Water Purifier Large Pantry, pref double-sided DC Fridge or Brownout Protector Equipment for Waxing [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Wood-Fired Stoves’
10 Feb
Using a Wood-Burning Stove in a Smoke-Control Area
This is something we need to work out – our new house will be in a smoke control area. To check whether you’re in a smoke control area look up your local authority here. If you are then the only wood or multi-fuel burning stoves you can fit are listed on the exempt appliances list. [...]
8 Feb
Wood-Fired Ranges in a PassivHaus
In my PassivHaus Renovation post I said that: Any non-solar water heating to be Gas Condensing boiler or CHP – wood fired stoves are not permitted (this conflicts with my peak-oil resilience planning) In return I got a comment posted by Andy Simmonds at the AECB stating: The AECB standards do not proscribe wood stoves, nor [...]
17 Jan
How much firewood should you store?
Huge numbers of people are putting in Wood Burning Stoves, Boilers and Ranges at the moment. They’re doing this for a number of reasons: to beat rising gas and electricity prices, to reduce their carbon footprint, or to improve the resilience of their heating system in the face of peak-oil based supply issues. The first [...]
13 Jan
Bin your Aga – buy a Rayburn
George Monbiot in the Guardian is launching a campaign against the Aga. He reasons that they use a ridiculous amount of oil, and generate an obscene level of CO2. I have to say that I’m with him on this. You won’t find much about Agas on GentleDescent because once I’d done the basic research [...]
3 Jan
A Passivhaus (Passive House) renovation?
The picture on the left is a thermograph – showing the difference in lost heat between a conventional house (on the left) and a house built to PassivHaus standards (on the right). Which house would you rather be living in when Russia cuts gas supplies? The PassivHaus standard, as interpreted for the UK by the [...]
20 Dec
Beautiful wood-fired stoves, ovens and ranges
A recent thread over at powerswitch unearthed a whole range of really beautiful – and practical – woodburning stoves. Here are some of the pictures, click on them to get more details. While I love the look of the Cucinotta Forno, I can’t see it being practical to just have a wood-fired [...]
17 Sep
Inspiration: La Ferme de Sourrou
This post was triggered by seeing this photo posted over at Powerswitch on avoiding the need for refrigeration. I think it is just such an uplifting picture – amongst discussions of doom, gloom, and rampaging hordes seeing it just makes my heart ache. The sheer organic nature of the construction, the multiple levels of greenery, [...]
17 Sep
Preparation: Peak Oil Ironing
Ok, so this is a little bit frivolous, but an electric iron will be too powerful for our PV batteries to handle, so how will we iron Post-Peak-Oil? The answer is probably that we won’t (we barely do as it is) but for the occasional wedding or funeral it’d be useful to have something. So [...]
21 Aug
Inspiration: Alternative Technology at Home in Suffolk
Another real hero – an amazing amount of information on all of the work they’ve done to their house: – Solar PV – Wind Power – A great Standy Power system with 12Volt Lighting – A wood-burning stove The real standout part of the site is all the information on using storing and growing wood that they have. [...]
