[flaxholmelis]

There seem to be a few people on this forum running Rayburns for cooking and heating. My husband and I have had a solid fuel Rayburn for cooking only for about 20 years and absolutely love it. However, we recently decided to go one step further and we bought a 2nd hand one with a boiler. This morning the boiler repair man said that our 14 year old combi boiler is not worth repairing - it's still running but drips continuously from several places - so the issue of getting the 'new' Rayburn fitted has been brought to the fore.  Mr F rang round several solid fuel boiler fitters over lunchtime and could not find anyone who would fit a 2nd-hand Rayburn.  How have people got on with fitting these themselves? We are both relatively practical and technically minded, but we are extremely busy with farming etc and to be honest I feel a bit out of my depth with this. We do actually have a relative who has done just this and will be able to offer advice, but he is also extremely busy. So I'm just really trying to find out how realistic this is to do it ourselves, what we need to be aware of, how do you connect to another system so that you can have hot water in summer without lighting the Rayburn? Any advice.

Thank you

[Womble]

Hiya,


We did exactly this a few years ago, and really it's not that difficult.


I made some notes at the time on this thread. Sadly Photobucket has blurred the photos since then, but you should still be able to get the drift.


Good luck!

[flaxholmelis]

Thank you Womble.  I've been discussing with my relative and he has a thermal store which will combine heat from his Rayburn, solar water heating and a boiler. We are thinking this will probably be the route we take as it makes the system very flexible and we won't be left cold if we forget/don't have time to chop the wood (it happens sometimes). It will also provide us with hot water in summer.

[Penninehillbilly]

Depends how much hot water you want 
We have a Rayburn Royal, still run it summer, just in the evenings to cook a meal, heat some water, take the chill off if it is chilly.
Bearing in mind for washing up etc you can heat water on the hob, we manage quite well.
But maybe where we live we need a bit of heat even in summer