Wedg1e
They call me Mr. Bodge-angles
- Messages
- 7,739
- Location
- Teesside, England
OK, so me and 'er indoors finally got the keys to the new place... and straight off she wants to rip out the brick fireplace and put some cast iron thing in as a centrepiece. Now the existing coal fire had a huge grate in which the previous owner burned logs, coal, cats, whatever he could lay his hands on... and it had a back boiler. You'll note I say 'had' because once I'd ripped the brickwork down and lined up the new cast iron backplate, it was obvious that new fireplace and old boiler weren't going to do jiggy-jiggy, no siree.
So the boiler had to come out (because 'she' didn't want to look for a fireplace that MIGHT have fitted).
All of which leaves us with a cavernous hole in the lounge fire-breast, a pile of bricks, a pile of scrap copper pipe and a bloody heavy back boiler.
You may recall me dropping the odd mention of me new workshop into the conversation (:cough: new workshop :cough: 40 x 18 foot :cough: )... well it has no heating.
Of course I have plans for the place (a 10 metre rifle range for a start ) but ideally I'd prefer not to freeze to death while I'm out there.
I can feel some kind of wood-burning thing coming on. After all, there's a humungous pile of logs that the previous owner left for us and it'd be a shame to waste them; the neighbouring houses are all on open fires so a bit of woodsmoke won't offend, and the alternatives would all tend to cause condensation and/or cost a mint to run.
So I was thinking... I managed to take the old fire and boiler out, surely I could rebuild them in the workshop and use the back boiler to feed a cluster of radiators... In fact, I was thinking of car radiators with the fans still attached so I'd have blown-air heating; rather like a system I looked at a couple of years ago for drying out newly-built houses (or flooded ones).
Meanwhile, without the back boiler, the house hot water system has a spare heating coil in the cylinder (the other is fed from the oil-fired boiler) so I think I'll do a bit of research into DIY solar panels...
I did consider piping the back boiler back to the cylinder from the garage but the house is a good few yards away and the pipework would be a bu99er to insulate and hide. Besides, I could see a reverse thermo-syphon effect where the cylinder ends up heating the remote boiler...
So the boiler had to come out (because 'she' didn't want to look for a fireplace that MIGHT have fitted).
All of which leaves us with a cavernous hole in the lounge fire-breast, a pile of bricks, a pile of scrap copper pipe and a bloody heavy back boiler.
You may recall me dropping the odd mention of me new workshop into the conversation (:cough: new workshop :cough: 40 x 18 foot :cough: )... well it has no heating.
Of course I have plans for the place (a 10 metre rifle range for a start ) but ideally I'd prefer not to freeze to death while I'm out there.
I can feel some kind of wood-burning thing coming on. After all, there's a humungous pile of logs that the previous owner left for us and it'd be a shame to waste them; the neighbouring houses are all on open fires so a bit of woodsmoke won't offend, and the alternatives would all tend to cause condensation and/or cost a mint to run.
So I was thinking... I managed to take the old fire and boiler out, surely I could rebuild them in the workshop and use the back boiler to feed a cluster of radiators... In fact, I was thinking of car radiators with the fans still attached so I'd have blown-air heating; rather like a system I looked at a couple of years ago for drying out newly-built houses (or flooded ones).
Meanwhile, without the back boiler, the house hot water system has a spare heating coil in the cylinder (the other is fed from the oil-fired boiler) so I think I'll do a bit of research into DIY solar panels...
I did consider piping the back boiler back to the cylinder from the garage but the house is a good few yards away and the pipework would be a bu99er to insulate and hide. Besides, I could see a reverse thermo-syphon effect where the cylinder ends up heating the remote boiler...