Pellets and Plumbing
My winter delivery of Wood Pellets for our Pellet Boiler came today and so I got my bi-annual "move-a-tonne-of-pellets-into-the-shed" outing today. At least it wasn't pissing down with rain like it usually does when we have a pellet delivery. And respect for the delivery guy. He piloted his huge lorry down our very steep, ungritted and rather icy lane with consummate skill and managed to get at least half the pallet off, rather than us having to unload the entire lot by the side of the road.
The drivers are always very curious about the pellets. They are more used to delivering agri feed and things in big drums and it sometimes takes a while to explain the concept of a pellet stove to them.
Our delivery comes from a place in the South West. I would love to have a more local supplier and you would think that here in the Forest of Dean, surrounded by millions of trees and home to many timber related industries that at least some of them would be into pellet manufacture, but sadly it seems to be not the case.
As for the Stove itself, it still works ok after a year but I definitely feel I bought too cheap. The build quality isn't brilliant, it's noisy and there doesn't seem to be a way of running it from a traditional CH controller rather than the on-board unit. Next time I would go for a German or Scandinavian model. I suppose you gets what you pay for. It was cheaper than the other offerings and we were in a hurry (and cold)
Pellets stoves and Boilers still seem to be a bit of niche market in the UK. I get the feeling we are suffering from earlier adopter syndrome. They've been around on the continent for years but there doesn't seem to be a big user base over here. If I search for my model on the interweb I get mostly French and German hits on the various online forums.
In other heating related news, the Green Lady and I ripped out the microbore plumbed radiator that never worked properly from the downstairs guest bathroom, and replaced it with much more sensible 15mm copper plumbed towel radiator. Rather than dicking about with soldering or compression joints I opted to use copper push-fit. You basically clean the end of the pipe to get rid of any burrs and then push the connector on and...err..well that's it really. We turned the water on and not a single leak or drip. I'm dead impressed by this technology, it's a bit pricy but a huge time saver.
Thanks to this an overnight transformation from tepid to toasty has occurred! Hurrah!
The drivers are always very curious about the pellets. They are more used to delivering agri feed and things in big drums and it sometimes takes a while to explain the concept of a pellet stove to them.
Our delivery comes from a place in the South West. I would love to have a more local supplier and you would think that here in the Forest of Dean, surrounded by millions of trees and home to many timber related industries that at least some of them would be into pellet manufacture, but sadly it seems to be not the case.
As for the Stove itself, it still works ok after a year but I definitely feel I bought too cheap. The build quality isn't brilliant, it's noisy and there doesn't seem to be a way of running it from a traditional CH controller rather than the on-board unit. Next time I would go for a German or Scandinavian model. I suppose you gets what you pay for. It was cheaper than the other offerings and we were in a hurry (and cold)
Pellets stoves and Boilers still seem to be a bit of niche market in the UK. I get the feeling we are suffering from earlier adopter syndrome. They've been around on the continent for years but there doesn't seem to be a big user base over here. If I search for my model on the interweb I get mostly French and German hits on the various online forums.
In other heating related news, the Green Lady and I ripped out the microbore plumbed radiator that never worked properly from the downstairs guest bathroom, and replaced it with much more sensible 15mm copper plumbed towel radiator. Rather than dicking about with soldering or compression joints I opted to use copper push-fit. You basically clean the end of the pipe to get rid of any burrs and then push the connector on and...err..well that's it really. We turned the water on and not a single leak or drip. I'm dead impressed by this technology, it's a bit pricy but a huge time saver.
Thanks to this an overnight transformation from tepid to toasty has occurred! Hurrah!