Are you worried you can’t afford a woodburner? If you’d love to have a stove in your home but are put off by the potential cost, this blog post might offer some solutions to that problem.
The initial investment in buying a stove is the biggest hurdle most people have to overcome before they can make their home cosier and cut their reliance on central heating.
While some of the figures you’ve seen flying around might be pretty scary, there are still some options available to you that might help you to get a woodburner.
1. Buy a cheaper woodburner
Perhaps the wood-burning stove you’ve seen has a price tag of several hundred pounds or maybe even more than £1,000. There are some very expensive appliances on the market and, if you’re trying to work to a budget, that might be enough to send you running for the hills.
But the truth is that you can get great stoves for less than £400. Take a look at the Mazona Ripley 4 kW multi-fuel stove, for example.
2. Interest-free finance
If your heart is set on a stove that’s out of your budget, you can still get the woodburner of your dreams with interest-free finance. Spread the cost of your stove with a 0% deal. You could get your new stove for a 10% deposit and a monthly payment of as little as £11.69. Learn more about woodburner finance deals.
3. Dig out your central heating bills
Perhaps the idea that you cannot afford a woodburner is based on looking at a lump sum and thinking it would make a sizeable hole in your bank balance. But turn this on its head by looking at your central heating bills from the past 12 months. Tot them all up and the two figures might not be too far apart. No, a woodburner probably wouldn’t reduce your heating bills to zero, but they would help you to make a considerable saving. Your new woodburner could be a case of speculating to accumulate.
Nathan Brewer shared with us the news that the direct debit payments to his energy supplier had dropped from £100 per month to £6 per month after he installed a woodburner.
And customer Andrew Nutall told us: “When our [woodburner] fire’s on, our combined gas and electricity bill is less than £3 a day (smart meter). Without it its £5 a day.”
There are definitely savings to be made if you install a woodburner and operate it efficiently.
4. Get a few installation quotes
Often the cost of stove installation is more than the price of the appliance that is being installed. Make sure you’re not paying more than you need to by getting a few engineers out to quote for your job. There’s usually room for negotiation in these matters and there are few better negotiation tools than having a better quote from someone else in your back pocket.
Just make sure that all the installers you speak to are part of a competent person scheme. There are no long-term savings to be made from working with a cowboy (and to do so would be very dangerous).
Install in summer
For obvious reasons, stove installers are very busy throughout autumn and winter. They might be able to be a bit picky about their jobs at that time of year. The whole heating sector quietens down through the summer – again, for obvious reasons – so you might have more luck negotiating installation costs when the sun is shining and business is a bit slower.
If you follow one or more of those tips, you might find that can’t afford a woodburner becomes CAN afford a woodburner. Let us know how you get on via Facebook or Twitter.
