Woodburner in BBC house

[Pommier]

We're having a house built to BBC (Batiment Basse Consomation) standard and we'll be having a woodburner in the living room. The builder will build the chimney and also an air supply to beneath where the fire will be fitted. The woodburner will be secondary heating as we'll have gas fired underfloor heating.

Can we have any sort of woodburner, or does it need to be one with direct air supply? If so, is there a pipe from the air supply in the floor to the woodburner?

Anyone recommend good woodburners (inexpensive!) for this situation.

Many thanks.

[idun]

We have two direct air supply wood burners and yes there is pipework from the exterior air source to the fire. Ours comes from the exterior wall behind the fires. 

We have two Handol's (now changed their name to a Contura), a 26T High with oven and a 52T. We hardly use the gas heating when we have them on....... a choice, but the heat is so delicious, that we don't feel the need for extra heating.

We had a Turbo Fonte insert in France which heated radiators, but the intake was directly from the room..... it worked well too.

[Pommier]

Thanks for that Idun. The Contura woodburners look very stylish - I shall look into costs.

[idun]

Yes, the conturas are very stylish, so when there was a choice between the Handol and the Conturas, I picked the less stylish Handol. I wanted an oven and the oven didn't look big enough in the contura.

Now they are all called contura, but as you will see, the elegant lines are the old contura range. The clumpier ones are the old Handols.

 

I had worried about the air flow etc as I didn't know anyone else with the direct air system, but both stoves light well AND the air system is good. We have to burn very dry wood on them though, they really do not like anything else.

I feel sure that other makers do the direct air flow, there are certainly many stoves out there. Incidentally, the person who sold ours suggested that we buy Nestor Martin, who they reckoned were the rolls royce of stoves. We didn't as we really wanted soapstone fires, but if they had done them with soapstone, we would have looked at them.

[Pommier]

As of next year, all new houses in France will have to be BBC standard, so I'd expect a bigger choice of woodburners will be available then. I'm looking ahead really as there hasn't even been a start made on building the house, but it's good to get some ideas. 

[idun]

IF I was building a new home and starting afresh, I'd buy a Tulikivi. I have seen them in action. Yes, expensive, BUT, they are remarkable. They are sold in France, and not the UK. We tried to get a Nuuna Uni (sp) but they didn't seem interested in selling to the UK either.

And talking of expensive some of the ceramic tiled stoves are even dearer.

[Pommier]

Was it one of these? http://www.perthshirewoodburningstoves.co.uk/nunna.html

They must be expensive - I can't find a price!

[powerdesal]

Each to his own I suppose, personally I think the ones shown on the link are grotesque.

[idun]

I do believe that the people I bought our stoves from contacted the people at that link and there was a problem. I actually spoke to the lady from nuuna, but she still didn't ever send any details about anything either. So the company I was using didn't want to deal with them, as they prefered to deal with companies who keep in contact. We decided that there was practically no market in the UK as people had not heard of them either. And as the winters are never usually too cold, their interested in the UK was practically non existant.

The tulikivis are sold in France http://www.tulikivi.com/ and all the details are there.

As it is ours isn't as 'heavy', so doesn't radiate heat for so long. The tulikivs are only on for a few hours, maybe three or four, and then diffuse the heat for 24 hours. Big investment in the stove and then reduced heating bill.