I'm going to have the stove running my radiators and hot water cylinder

If you're using a pump to circulate the water, you may find that during
a power cut when the pump is off, you can barely run an efficient
woodstove stove above a tepid murmur because the water jacket would
overheat. You wouldn't be able to burn it hot enough to cook on, and it
wouldn't heat the house much either. A stand-alone stove is more useful
in a powercut.

True - and of course you can even boil pans of water for baths etc on a
stand-alone stove. We don't often have power cuts where I live, as I'm near
Bury town centre, but it's true we do occasionally, and it may well happen
in the future as energy gets harder to come by generally.

The piping from the back of my stove will be going straight up the chimney
to my hot water cylinder/radiators, so hopefully during a power cut the laws
of physics will prevail and convection will carry the boiling water up the
pipes to the much colder cylinder and radiators.

In the event of prolonged power cuts, I would simply drain the system and
disconnect the stove from the heating system. It's a 10kW stove, and would
probably heat the house on its own - although the living room might be a tad
warm! Of course it would then also provide cooking facilities too.


Whatever brand you choose, before you buy it, ask the dealer to put you
in touch with other customers and see if they are satisfied. There are a
lot of beautiful but inefficient "decorative feature" stoves out there,
which are difficult to control or have a relatively short life. Good
stoves like Morso and Hunter last decades and the heat can be fine-tuned
(to stay in all night for example).

Got a Morso "Dove Cleanheat 1630" :-)


Also take care with burning joiners offcuts or demolition scavenges.
Sometimes old reclaimed wood has been treated for worm or rot with toxic
chemicals whose smoke I wouldn't want to breathe, some of it has been
kilndried, and some of it is coniferous softwood. Kilndried offcuts burn
so hot and fast it's hard to keep a pleasant steady heat in the room.
Softwoods tend to tar the chimney, which can be a fire hazard.

Thanks for the advice. Hopefully the "clean burning" design of my stove
might eliminate some of these problems, but I'll certainly keep an eye out
for these things.

Best wishes,

Andy

The piping from the back of my stove will be going straight up the
chimney
to my hot water cylinder/radiators, so hopefully during a power cut the
laws
of physics will prevail and convection will carry the boiling water up
the
pipes to the much colder cylinder and radiators.

If it's a pumped system, you have to install a convection-only "escape
radiator" anyway, for safe escape of heat if the pump fails.

I'm having a radiator put in my loft, directly above the hot water cylinder,
which in turn is directly above the stove. Once I've converted my loft, I'll
get a second radiator connected up to the first.

But with a
powerful stove, convection won't be sufficient to disperse all the heat,
and you should also install a safety overflow for boiling water (ours
was a swan pipe onto the exterior roof). With a powerful stove, if the
pump's not working, convection alone won't disperse all the heat, and
the overflow will discharge.

Thanks for this - I'll consult my installer about this one!


In the event of prolonged power cuts, I would simply drain the system
and
disconnect the stove from the heating system.

Waaaaah! Is running a waterjacket stove with an empty waterjacket,
suggested as safely possible, in the manufacturers handbook?

I'm thinking it might blow up; you'd create a heat difference between
the inner and outer empty stove waterjacket that might fracture it.I
once had a cast iron stove firebox fall apart during full burn and
...you don't want that to happen. Really.

Hmmm yes I can see that! The waterjacket is actually an insert into the main
body of the stove, so even if it did fracture, it would only do so inside
the thick cast iron walls of the stove. As it's a Morso stove, I'm wondering
if this design is deliberate, for the very reason you suggest above!

If all else fails, I can simply take the waterjacket out of the stove, and
fill in the pipe holes in the back with fire cement, I suppose. But I think
that it might be OK with the back boiler inside it.

All good safety issues to be considered though - thanks!

Andy