Wood Burning shower

[Trev62]

After looking at the thread reading ovens I thought I would add this here.

We have no hot water piping in our home. We rely on the log burners/fire pit one of which always has a pot of hot water on it also our shower unit.

The best way to describe it is.....you light a small fire in the fire pit at the bottom which sends the heat up through a cylinder containing water (filled constantly from the main water supply) and obviously (as a normal fire) the heat passes through a pipe and out of the house via a chimney. When the pressure in the tank is sufficient the water automatically egresses from the shower and the temperature and output of the water is controlled by two taps on the side of the tank.

This provides us with heat from the fire box and the pipe work also hot water via a tap we have affix to the bottom of the water cylinder/tank. It has the bonus of being moveable, so, in the summer we can take it outside attached it to a water hose and shower outside.

Some people fix these with pressure gauges and release valves to provide hot water through the house but we like things simple.

But this system (for us) is perfect warmth/heating, hot water and showers all free courtesy of the dead wood we have gathered from the lands around us, no gas or electric costs at all.

One small admission though......we are on our second shower the first one we managed to overheat and cracked it, moral of the story read the instructions, they work fine with wood but sunflower blocks burn so hot too many can cause some serious damage!! Lesson learnt (another one)

[lancashire lass]

it sounds similar to the old fashioned back boiler of an open fire - when we (as in, my parents & I) moved into our rented house, we had no heating other than an open fire in the front and (where we lived the most) back room. If we wanted hot water for a bath, there was a hook thing just inside the chimney which opened / closed a metal flap to direct the heat to heat the water tank up. We eventually bought the house and the first thing my mother did was get rid of the fire place (she never liked it) to put in gas central heating and a combi boiler for instant hot water.

[Mo]

it sounds similar to the old fashioned back boiler of an open fire - when we (as in, my parents & I) moved into our rented house, we had no heating other than an open fire in the front and (where we lived the most) back room. If we wanted hot water for a bath, there was a hook thing just inside the chimney which opened / closed a metal flap to direct the heat to heat the water tank up. We eventually bought the house and the first thing my mother did was get rid of the fire place (she never liked it) to put in gas central heating and a combi boiler for instant hot water.

Yes, I remember those, and the clothes horse of washing in front of them in winter.
Then we moved to a house with a stove in the kitchen that heated the water, and an 'all night' grate in the living room. (not sure how it worked but I think you could regulate the air so that if you banked it up it would stay in all night.

[Spreckly]

I wonder if back boilers still exist, and if they are used. There was one when we moved in here. The boiler part had been taken out, and Ted used the damper to repair our rising door curtain! A friend had one in her fireside oven, with a tap to draw the water off. This was used for their bath.

Yes the clothes horse on wet days. We had a ceiling rack as well. I have one in the wash house here, but things take forever to dry, so I use an over fifty year old collapsible airer next to the kitchen radiator.

Apologies for straying off topic.

Aren't some of showing our age!

[lancashire lass]

We had a ceiling rack as well.

I'd forgotten about that - yes, we had one too. Our house had quite high ceilings for a terraced house so when the clothes were hoisted up, they were out of the way. I think the problem is that because the ceiling rack was normally in the "kitchen" (before extensions were built), when the previous owner built a kitchen extension, the original kitchen was turned into a living room (where the ceiling rack was still in use), and the front room was supposed to be our "posh" room (didn't happen though)

[Mo]

I shared a rented terrace which had a ceiling rack in the kitchen over the bath.
Odd house, 2 up, 2down and one out the back. And you got to the one out the back through the kitchen so hard luck if your housemate was in the bath.
Only one tap, over the kitchen sink. A Baby Burco for laundry or heating water, which could be stood on the spin dryer to wheel it across to the bath.

[Trev62]

I wonder if back boilers still exist, and if they are used.

Some of the petchkas out here have the facility to heat all your water and run a radiator heating system via a back boiler.

Aren't some of showing our age!

I show mine every morning, I used to be able to balance on one leg to put my socks on, now if I try it I fall flat on my face!