Sarsen Energy

It is difficult to put figures on the savings made by customers as they start heating their homes with a wood burning stove.  A customer recently asked us to quote for fitting a second stove in the front of the house as the one that we fitted at the back of the house has saved her 2 tanks of oil in the past year.  The stove and fitting had cost approx. £2500 and they have saved about £1200 on oil.  She did not say whether they had bought their wood (probably about £400) or bought a licence to the nearby forest and collected their wood for free.

'A seminal 2003 Australian study on greenhouse gas emissions from domestic woodheating is on your side; it showed that burning wood produced up to 10 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions per unit of heat than other sources. This is because while trees are standing they act as a temporary carbon sink, and were a tree to decompose naturally it would release CO2. In effect, by burning the tree - at the right point - you avoid this, and burning releases an equivalent or smaller amount of carbon to that absorbed by the tree in its lifecycle. Naturally this is dependant on myriad factors, including the type of wood or pellet you burn and its provenance. If you buy imported, treated logs from the garage as opposed to locally sourced biomass or processed waste wood pellets, your bid for carbon neutrality will go up in smoke.'  Lucy Siegle The Observer, Sunday 25 January 2009.

A wood burning stove can earn home credits iin your homes's Energy Performance Certificate boosting the environmental rating of your property.