Fuel Selection Solid Fuel Boilers

Fuel Selection

What fuel can I burn in my boiler?

Your madaboutheat boiler will burn a wide range of fuels. The multi fuel boilers manually loaded model range will burn just about anything, including wood pellets which can be loaded manually, logs, cardboard, wood off cuts, coal. Our dual fuel boilers will burn pellets, pea coal, grain and manually loaded fuel same as the multi fuel boilers. The fully automatic pellet boilers are fixed to one fuel, pellets. Full range of materials that can be burnt in manually loaded multi fuel boiler are logs, waste wood, coal, peat, paper, waste food, grains including maize, wheat and barley, some domestic rubbish, slack and other coal and wood products. The primary fuel for the pellet type boilers are of course wood pellets as it is essentially a fully automated system although of course other fuels can be manually fed through the door.

Wood

 

The use of wood as a fuel source for heating is as old as civilization itself. Firewood is readily available throughout Europe. If you have access to trees and have a few hours to cut and stack the wood you can have virtually free heat and hot water for your home. Because our multi fuel manual boilers are fan assisted and have incinerator like characteristics, they will burn any type of wood available including waste wood like old furniture and pallets and they will extract maximum possible heat. Firewood is a renewable resource provided the consumption rate is controlled at sustainable levels. The environmental impact of using wood as a fuel depends on how it is burnt, but even if a fire gives off smoke at least it is using a sustainable fuel, compared with fossil fuels. When wood is sourced from a sustainable forest, it can be regarded as being carbon-neutral. That is, a tree absorbs as much carbon as it releases when burnt. Logs are widely available, easily and cleanly stored. Hardwood logs when seasoned are the very best firewood for open fires and wood burning stoves, long lasting and easy to light. Softwood firewood is best used on closed appliances - multifuel stoves, multifuel boilers, wood burning stoves, coal boilers, solid fuel boilers and such like due to the tendency to spit and crackle. It will get to high temperature very quickly but does not last quite as long as hardwood firewood. Prices vary greatly around the country but generally a ton bag of softwood logs is approximately £50 while hardwood logs around £70. Of course if you have access to your own wood your heating costs could become negligible!! The energy content of wood is much more dependent on the moisture content than the any other fuel. The energy content (number of joules of heat produced) improves as the wood dries. On average it is assumed to be at 4.5 kWh/kg. @ 14% moisture content.

 

Coal

Coal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, a fossil fuel, it is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide and is extracted from the ground by mining.

Coal is mined in over 100 countries, and on all continents except Antarctica.

The largest reserves are found in the USA, Russia, Australia, China, India and South Africa.

Coal can be fed manually or automatically into your boiler and to heat a home of 2500 sq metres this would have to be done approximately 2-3 times in a 24 hour period or every 2 weeks in to hopper.

Coal is widely available throughout UK, Ireland and Europe.

In October 2023 a tonne of coal costs on average £290, slack £260.

Coal consistently gives high heat outputs and provides exceptional value for money.

Nationwide availability is extensive and it can be stored easily in bags or delivered to a location of your choice.

Alternatively if you purchase a boiler with an automated hopper, small pieces of coal, more commonly known as slack or anthracite bean, or pea coal, can be fed to the boiler with an auger screw. 

The energy content of coal is around 6.67 kWh/kg

 

Wood Pellet

Wood pellets are a type of fuel, generally made from compacted sawdust.

They are usually produced as a byproduct of saw milling and are readily available at a number of outlets throughout the UK and Ireland and are very popular in Europe.

The pellets are extremely dense and can be produced with a low humidity content (below 10%) that allows them to be burned with a very high combustion efficiency.

Further, due to the pellets being of regular geometry and small size, this allows automatic feeding with very fine calibration.

They can be fed to a burner by auger feeding system. Their high density also permits compact storage and transport over long distance. They can be conveniently blown in from a tanker to a storage area in your home. As the price of heating with fossil fuels increases, the popularity for pellet heating has increased dramatically.

A tonne of wood pellets in May 2024 costs approximately £300 per tonne. Emissions and volatile organic compounds from pellet burning equipment, are, in general, very low in comparison to other forms of combustion heating, making this one of the less-polluting renewable heating options available.

Wood pellets are not only suited to the wood pellet boiler range but function well in our multi fuel boilers when loaded in manually.

The energy content of wood pellets is approximately 4.7-4.9 kWh/kg.