DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

We are in the process of fitting a wood burning stove as the main heating in our living area. It will initially use an existing chimney which is on an outer wall.

I want to transfer the stove away from this location onto a thick slate inner wall ( we live in an old barn conversion ) and basically run a new metal flue straight up through the ceiling and slate roof. It is a better idea to heat an internal wall. I know about keeping the thing away from flammable materials etc. and this can be done.

The question is this. The exposed wall which will hold the stove separates the living room from two bedrooms, one on the ground floor and one above - the living room is quite high at this point. I cannot find anything which would prevent the flue from the stove being taken through the separating wall ahd then run up through the bedrooms to the roof. This would then mean that these two rooms would be heated by the flue which passes through them if uninsulated sections were included.

Are there any comments on this? Has anyone done it?

Regards

Ormond

An internal chimney of any type will always work better if it is indoors, insulated and warm.
Many people have problems lighting a wood fire that has a cold steel flue.
The heat from the fire, has to lift a cold plug of air at least 16 feet high to move it out of the way, before the flue pipe heats up and burns properly.
Lighting and getting going are made more difficult, where there is no direct fresh air supply into the back/bottom of the stove.
So, on the one hand it seems a good idea to use the pipe to heat the property, on the other a pipe that quickly looses its heat will not be easy to light or to use on tick over.

If you use cast flue it will get as hot as anything though so you would need to shield it in some way as there would be a big injury risk. Also, you will get a much better fire with a double insulated flue like a selkirk or similar.

You should also consider that a straight up flue will also perform much better than a bendy one. I would suggest you could still do this with a double flue and still get some benefit without the risk and loss of performance.

No expert, just from our experience with our wood stove and flue.

Thanks for your input.

I think that I may have to try it and see what happens. I realize that an insulated flue would work better. I think that it would always be possible to insulate a single flue after the event with glass fibre, or I think I have seen some blanket like things for the same job, and then box the whole thing in.

The uninsulated flue would certainly be a possible injury risk, as indeed it would if it went straight up from the stove, but this could be mitigated by judicious use of fire resistant 'boxing' using louvres to let the heat out.

The flue would be essentially straight up after an initial 500mm or so of 45 degree pipe through the wall. There must be an evens chance that it will work.