Uh Oh! Boiler down

The most effective way is to change the bottom of the chimney and put a
stove or closed fireplace (Parkray etc) there.

A back boiler on an _open_ fire is generally just for heating domestic
water. Extremely simple - no pumps, they just rely on convection to move
the water - but actually put out less heat into the room when "on". On
as in you've hit the special flap in the chimney throat with a poker.

If you forget about it and leave it on, not only is it gorging on coal
you'll be woken about 2am by loud banging as the water boils in the tank.
In extremis steam shoots from the side of the house. They heat the water
quite nicely over the day when not "on".

 

Doubtful. It'll almost certainly drain inside, rather than outside.
Assuming it's in the basement like in most French houses.

No, it means 'Fioul', i.e. central heating oil. Much heavier and
blacker than parrafin.

And the boilers bear no resemblance whatsoever to the little
tacked-on-the-wall gas things they have in the UK. Our new boiler
installation, with quite a few extra bits of work thrown in, like
linking the pool's heat exchanger and adding some radiators, came to
over 10,000 Eu.

 

You have rekindled memories of houses with the side wall blown out by faulty
back boilers.

 

Ah ta. It's in the garage.

Right, I'd translated fioul for fuel. My bad.

Quite. Our boiler is a 6ft x 3ft x 3ft jobbie. WRT to your price of €10k, it
looks like my 3,5k€ isn't far off then, as it's just a boiler replacement.

 

Yes, ours was pretty much the whole system, just using (mostly) the
existing piping, radiators, etc. For quite a large house, as you know,
with extra capacity for both the pool heating and enough for extra
rads if/when we convert the rest of the loft space, and separate
circuits and controls for rads and underfloor heating.

the whole thing looks more like you'd expect in an office block or
factory, but it works amazingly well. We'll probably save the price in
fuel bills over about ten years or so.

 

Ah, nothing like a good old-fashioned steam explosion.

 

Frankly, I don't think I cba with an open fire any more - they're great
for lobbing the rubbish on, but dreadfully dirty and costly when used on
a daily basis.
Russian-type stove getting built here this year, with a bit of luck and
a following tuit.

 

Cant see this working too well with house flues in masonry wall which I
thought we were talking about...
I'd need to be convinced....

 

Fuel, paraffin, hard to tell sometimes.

 

/Googles.
Interesting; I've never seen one.
I should think they still need to be connected to a vertical flue to
work.
Lots of stoves have some sort of complexity inside to transfer heat to
convection fins ,water heating jacket or cooking space but at the end
need a rising column of warm air to draw the air in to burn the fuel.

 

Heh,

Mind there are two common types of heating oil 28 second and 32
second. The latter is heavy oil, essentially diesel without additives
and the former paraffin but not necessarily with a green hose.

 

Yes, there is a vertical flue at the end of all that meandering. If
designed right the fire will establish with no faffing about, as the
natural draft is predominant. If designed on the piss, the draft has to
be established by the upward movement of gases, sometimes by a secondary
fire - not a very satisfactory arrangement.
My point about the flue going downwards is valid, but it has to be
over-ridden by a natural draft to work properly. Whatever, mine will be
built with this in mind and should work ok.

 

It's the thicker stuff that's used in France, certainly, and yes, it's
pretty much the same as diesel fuel. Never heard the '32 second'
description before - any idea what it means?

French specs for 'fioul domestique', if you're interested, can be
found at http://www.cpdp.org/Temp/399472530009430/I-2-13FOD.pdf

 

"Redwood viscosity - The number of seconds required for 50 ml. of an oil
to flow out of a standard Redwood viscosimeter at a definite temperature;
British viscosity standard."
http://www.jabertech.com/petrochemical_glossary.htm

 

Ta. I do love these old, completely arbitrary units that have somehow
survived so long. Like proof alcohol, and the shilligng designations
of scottish beers.

 

"Kerosene, also known as 28-second oil (or more commonly home heating oil),
is produced after the distillation process of crude oil. Most domestic
systems run on kerosene because it provides a cleaner and more efficient
burn for your home.
Gas oil (red diesel), also known as 35-second oil, is more commonly used in
agriculture and industry. Gas oil is less combustible than kerosene and has
more carbon atoms."

I suspect the terms relate to the viscosity, e.g. how long it takes for a
given quality to pass through a specified hole under controlled conditions -
a bit like a viscosity cup used when mixing spray paint TIKBW.

Our house in NI uses 28-sec for heating.

 

Is there any other kind?

"Historically, the metre was defined by the French Academy of Sciences as
the length between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar, which was
designed to represent one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator
to the North Pole along Paris Meridian. In 1983, the metre was redefined
as the distance travelled by light in free space in 1â„299,792,458 of a
second."
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre#Timeline_of_definition

(Still better than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(length) though)

 

The oil system I had used 28 second which I think is the most common
in the UK. The rating is something to do with the viscosity and a
quick google suggest that I may have meant 35 not 32
http://www.bayford.co.uk/faqs. I was going from memory when I had a
system fitted a couple of houses back, sure the two option were 28 and
32 but memory maybe wrong.

The next house after the oil system was already using propane so
having moved from there I am back on mains gas which in comparison to
propane is dirt cheap, not so sure with reference to oil.

 

And now I've found the conversion factors, that shows a maximum
allowed viscocity of 38.5 seconds redwood for the French fioul.

Mains gas... I dream of having mains gas.

 

[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

Not terribly popular in everyday use, though.

"There's a very good vegetable stand around here, but it's not really
close, about 1,8x10^38 Lp from here"
"No problem, I'll take the bike."
"Then buy me 4,6x10^7 mp of potatoes, will you?"
"Sure"

Naaah, won't work.