UK Off-Grid basics 3: Heat and Hot Water 

You are such a thoughtful person, not only for your own safety and comfort but you are always speaking about children's safety and well being also. You think things through from start to finish. I am impressed.

Wow, you just explained what seemed like a really complex system in a way anyone could understand and put into practise. You actually answered quite a few questions I've had for a long time on water and heating systems. One of the main reasons your videos are so watchable (for me) are that you come across as one of us - just an ordinary bloke, living on very little money, solving problems instead of letting them hold you back. Pretty damn inspirational, actually :)

I was going to say something . I keep watching your videos all time.

You'd make a bloody good college teacher you know.........excellent easy to understand explanations of the finer details. 5 stars young man !

Absolutely agree with you about keeping warm. After spending my childhood in a cold Victorian house I vowed to keep my children warm in what turns out to be yet another Victorian house!

Fascinating. The diagrams really help hey. Warmth makes the difference for sure, nothing worse than a freezing cold house and having to slog every morning to warm one room. Miserable.

I’d love to see you do a rocket stove mass heater. Your vids are class, you’re an excellent teacher.

The ability to keep warm is key. It's the main reason I started with the off grid cabin idea. My sister has a huge old manse house in Scotland and we share a piece of woodland that was left to us. I couldn't cope with the hassle of having to get that place heated and having lived in the Highlands for a good part of my life I would much prefer a small, well insulated and easy to heat cabin than go through all the hassle of feeding her wood stove and coal fires to keep warm. It's lovely in the summer but it's hard going in other seasons and if it means that I do away with tons of space in my living space, then so be it. I have a wood burning cookstove which does everything I need as well as a propane heater and two burner camping stove. I also have the use of a diesel generator but don't as a rule. I am installing a wind solar hybrid system when I finally move up permanently. I have tons of firewood and there's a log splitter which I can use so we do have a lot of wood so it makes sense to use it to heat a manageable space for myself. Mine is on a similar budget. That trolly is a good idea. Really well explained!

Love your clip board sketches and they are great! You are clever, knowledgeable, well spoken and kind. Thank you so much for eplaining this, i never really knew how this all worked and your extra tips are really useful too!!

That old Morsø 1125 is a beautifull piece. Not the easiest one one to fire, but once you get to know it it’s a beast. Like your self circulating system. It’s a forgotten art.

We have a multi fuel stove that runs 8 radiators all around the house , we got it for just over £300 and it's been in about 23 year ago & we use smokeless eggs they are an oval coal hence eggs , we get one bag a week all year round so by the time winter comes we don't need extra , we can use of course wood or rubbish as well ..lol wouldn't change it for anything we love it

Incredibly watchable guy so easy to understand and no dreded music impressive

Just a thought, you might want to look into how a rocket mass stove works. There's not much change between one tailored for wood and one tailored for (char)coal. The big difference is that the stove burns off fuel more efficiently, and that a mass is used to retain more of the heat. People say it uses 10% of the fuel of a normal stove, to give off the same amount of heat, but even if it used 50% of the fuel, it would still be a great improvement.

A few points in a mega waffley comment. 1. love your vids, discovered via series 2 restoration which I devoured, then been busy hoovering up loads more: that Zil is a beast. If it back fired it'd break your nose! 2 I met Felix and Karen living in their Bristol Lodekka and was sold on a cup of tea off the stove in your teashirt with the windows open! A few years later I was living in a yeates bodied Bedford 45 seater enjoying a comfortable 80degrees in winter. Then a showmans wagon fitted with" the Beetonette" coal range 30 years on I love my woodwarm 6kw woodstove. They're brilliant 3 firelight and therefore candlelight I feel are hard wired into us. The colour temperature is replicated by low wattage tungsten light and even warm white leds. How people can light their houses with cold blue white LEDs/ tubes I just can't fathom. I would rather sit in the dark! A love of the fireside(and fire tending/ making) is something I feel grateful for. People who don't have it are really missing out. 4. Shame you don't have any sponsors, Max. But I'd certainly buy you pint sometime. Keep up the very good work. Many thanks.

Brilliant video that was really enjoyable to watch. Thank you for taking the time to explain your system in such detail.

Really helpful. Brilliant channel. Keep up the good work!

Great overview, thanks very much for putting out these videos!

Great videos, and love your enthusiasm! Keep on living the dream!

Love all your videos max. Keep up the great work

Just wanted to say thanks for this and all your other videos. Really enjoying them all and the diagram was especially useful!

Really impressed - especially with the tiny squirrel. I've got a slimline Stovax and I mostly heat the sky above my house... btw I wish my daughter could find a bloke like you instead of someone who has to work himself up to washing a plate! :-)

Fantastic,well done.joy to watch👍😁

Hi Max, I've just discovered your channel and I really love it. Many thanks for taking the time to explain things so well!

these are fantastic informative videos. thank you, well done.

Really clear explanation! Thank you so much for this.

Thanks for being alive , great videos keep it up !

Great info, love the stove cheers

Awesome off grid advice , your learning and sharing,I’m sure will of saved me some serious head scratching , great channel Atb Lee

been enjoying your vids these last few days....thanks and hope all is well

Another excellent, informative video Max, keep it up :)

Brilliant video Max! A real eye opener.

Excellent work, your channel is fascinating.

Very good. The one thing i would change is to put in mixing taps if you can find some for cheap.

Just discovered your channel... Brilliant very informative and entertaining

Brilliant video, new to off grid since last year, answered so many questions !

Subscribed, simply because you're awesome! Thanks for the info here. One day I want to live this way.

That is a beautifully designed system, my friend. You have a real genius for this kind of stuff.

Cool off-grid house. Looks nice and cozy.

oh max you absolute ledgend, if you're up north ever we go fer a pint

Very informative & well explained on every level. Thank you so much for sharing this posting Maximus.have a great weekend.from Somerset 🍁🍂🦃🌈

Great explanation ,wonderfully simple setup and beautiful cabin especially that spiral staircase, sure rite about safety with Co2

Very much like a back bolier with the coal fire watch i had grown up with, a friend of mine when we were kid his grandad and grandma had the more or less what you've got can't beat the old ways nice to see old and new working together thank you for sharing .

Just discovered your channel. I've subbed. Great videos. Very helpful to the common man. Or woman. Keep up the good work.

This has become one of my favourite channels on RU-vid, can't get enough.

Wow a lot of thought went into that. Amazing!

Fantastic Vid Max..

You explain things really nicely and show really well what is possible. Also useful is when you tell us about your mistakes. Thanks a million!

Such a simple explanation 👍 I will be utilising all your info on a eco build next year ...

Great info well done

You are one of the most clever men I've ever watched on youtube! Wow!

Thanks great video. Very informative. Recently discovered channel (Zill) and love what your doing!

Lots of good advice, many thanks.

this is a great video i get something new out of it each time i watch it. i hope to start my dream of no bills asap lol

Thank you for all your great information

Lots of use in this video, got to say you make very intresting videos, would love a video on how you changed the use of your land to allow you to stay there.

Bloody love your house m8

Very well explained, I love your redundant setup. In case you are looking for a project related to burning wood HOT you could check out rocket stove mass heaters. They can be made fully diy.

another excellent video! thank you

Superb video as usual, i never realised you had an ‘upstairs’!

Very good video and good advice you cant beat a log burner in winter and yes there is a magic about fire which is engraved in to our DNA

Another great video!

Fascinating Maximus lol 😂

Enjoying the channel - lots of great information and unique and valuable perspective. One comment - referencing anti-freeze around water. Important to use the proper type in contact with anything that might be consumed.

Excellent, i made my wood/coal burner fom a gas bottle, i love it

Well that was bloody champion

found your channel a few days ago.. your ideas & ability to adapt ' junk ' are amazing

Hi, I have just ordered a little mini multifuel log burner for my kitchen to heat up the water for washing dishes and hand washing clothes. I was fascinated in your teaching about how the heating system works, you have finally made me understand how it all works and therefore I emailed your clip to myself so that I can go over it a few times as it sounds the perfect solution to sorting out the hot water needed for the other side of my old bungalow in the bathroom. I do have an electric water tank in the loft but it's huge and therefore I have never turned it on, pointless for an electric shower or the kitchen sink for myself and my teenage daughter. But your heating system from the wood burner is the solution to our problem in obtaining hot water for the bathroom. I am so glad to have come across your clips, they are a huge wealth of valuable information. Take care see you in the next clips

im a hands on type to under stand how that would work,, it sounds like it would heat you comfortably well,, thanks for the video

I truly enjoyed all little details. Questions........ about your intentions. * Did you want a system, using the minimum firewood and get the most out of it? - For if wood is not an issue, it is rather over done. * Did you consider that you don't want non stop feeding fire? - For it drains a person out, I know. * Do I see right? You go to the kitchen in the morning. Thanks to the radiators, temperatures are not too low. Starting up your oven, gets warm quickly, running it until some 2 PM, warms up your water, radiators and you can do cooking. Than you can forget about heating. Only for the evening you might start (might not) you living room fire place. Is that it? .... If had a large fire place running whole day and separate water boiler, I might would end up feeding fires whole day and using 3-4 times more wood.

I like that you have painted the cast iron rads black, better radiation... 😎👍☘️ Delighted to see u have the CO / smoke detectors...as a woodstove owner, I agree they are obligatory... ☺️

you really should be teaching people,on paid courses,i'm pretty sure you'd have a very comfortable income,although i guess that defeats the object,paying feckin taxes etc,but you really do have a gift for getting potentially mind boggling stuff across in a very down to earth understandable manner,as soon as i work out the toilet and heating i'm leaving the wife,grabbing my mastiff and going to live in the shed!!!!,many thanks for great vids.

A Double Like. Thank you Maximus.

Woah... I've just been watching your video from the start of the COVID crisis... seeing how you've come along with camerawork and video quality.

Great stuff. Make up tank higher then cylinder high as poss vent on the primary flow large bore. seen a house demolised by centrel heating having to small a vent. Feed on primary return to bottom of boiler vent over make up tank, I still think these gravity systems are by far the best although materiel costs are high.

I'm building a gravity fed wood burning central heating system and your video was extremely helpful, there is surprisingly little information about how do this,.

That was excellent mate, thanks. Please do remember to touch on the amount of land you have available for gathering wood though mate. Seeing as how important it is for your energy needs I imagine it's a fairly critical factor in your ability to remain off grid. Have a good one!

You seem a very switched on type of guy, also you understand the physics of general plumbing. Good set up you have there good luck.

I've been looking into doing this for a few years now and have been totally overwhelmed by the books advice videos etc all telling you different things! I have some of my own 'food sources' so to speak but I'm limited to what I can grow etc. I try and recycle water and everything else I use and try to buy as little as possible from shops and places. Then I found this guy! And in the UK!! I am now so very optimistic and enthusiastic again! I'm now looking for some land where I can start with my 'shed' and gradually turn my life around and live the life I've wanted to for so many years! To be as self sufficient as possible.....a lot of hard work ahead I think but I have the passion and determination which I hope will help me get there!! Thankyou thankyou thankyou!! 👩‍🌾🐔 P.S. My husband likes to do the same!! Red hot room with the doors open out onto the garden!! Infuriating and frustrating for me!! 😤

Greetings from the West of Ireland again.... yet again we seem to have a similar outlook on life. 10 years ago I put in our HW/CH system by myself having read a few books. Multifuel cast iron fire (burning peat) with back boiler and steel rads. All gravity fed connected through a scavenged indirect feed emersion heater. Then about 4 years ago I had a rush of blood and paid someone from the UK to take out the emersion and put in an air source heat pump with heat exchanger on the roof---- cost 3k Euro and its rubbish. 2 years after the sacrificial anode decayed so bad the hot water smelled of rotten eggs, then 2 weeks ago the compressor failed and now we have no hot water and nobody here can fix it! The copper emersion tank is still on my scrap pile Lesson is Keep It Simple!!!

2:47 I have an open fire. I always burn Homefire smokeless on it. I cover it over with paper or card board last thing at night before bed. In the morning i clean all the ash out and its still hot enough to put some more Homefire on & off it goes. Its a really hot coal.

I all ways enjoy your videos

That chair has seen better days :)

Oops sorry, my old tractors don’t have a water pump, but the water circulates using the theory you describe. Nice heating system you have.

would love to have a set up like that, don't know where i'd even begin to think about starting!

Second time of watching,still brilliant 😁👍👏👏👏

Thank you for wearing clothes for filming this! LOL. Love underfloor heating. Makes me sad to think of all the cast iron radiators I've seen hauled off as junk.

Great stuff...

With antifreeze the primary circuit can also run at a higher temperature without boiling. The primary circuit could also be slightly pressurised so an even higher temperature could be attained, although a more sophisticated overflow with pressure valve and diaphragm would be needed.

Maximus: "These would be expensive but ehm... I think I found them or was given them or somesuch....anyway..." Neighbour: "Anyone seen where my valves have gone?!?!"

This is just brilliant... The way you explain things is amazing, have you ever considered teaching?

milk churn! a metal bucket is the level i'm at

Agreed that you are an excellent teacher. Would love to see a tour of your house and property, especially like to know more about your amazing staircase, did you make it yourself?

I only just found you and love everything I have seen so far. I wanted to ask though, is there a video giving a tour of the barn house?

Loving the vids man! I'm a British heating engineer of 20 years plus and must say your set up is well commendable! One thing tho, that hot water outlet on top of the cylinder needs venting over the feed tank. I wouldn't rely on the cold feed for expansion. Unless you missed that off your sketch ;)

Lovely video.. Have you ever thought of making or getting a heat exchanger that takes excess heat from the flue that takes the waste gases from the wood burner? If it was set up right, You would be able to make use of the hotness of the waste air instead of that heat being just vented outside! Just a thought? I grew up in a old 1920's home as a child and for 45 years we managed with just a old open fire with a back boiler and coal burning then in the 1970's used smokeless coal as the clean air act come in. Sometimes even burning wood from the local big woodlands nearby us. Allot of people said what you said near the end of the video, Like us grew up with real fires, it was very basic feelings of connection to our ancestor's who like us spent hours sitting by the lovely fire! It is very mesmerising watching the flames flicker. I think that is the thing that many generations loved the heat the hot water and the fire flames dancing? in fact in the 1970's when the power strikes happened we even cooked on or open fire and had the hot water and heat, So a good back up. I now am in a another house which is rented and about the same age as my home of my childhood and it too has a fireplace but this is sealed up? And I just don't have the money to have it opened and cleaned or buy the fireplace sadly.. shame as I miss my real open fire, as a modern enclosed door type real fire be so nice to have.. save tons of money on heating the water and heating the homes radiator's. I have to pay big time for a gas system to do that now. Thanks for the videos :)

In Australia we have flueless, mobile indoor gas heaters that attach to the wall with a baynet hose. Regulations require we have ventilation grilles to the outside close to the floor. I think this is to vent carbon dioxide (heavier than air). If the heater is stifled by CO2 it can either be extinguished and leak natural gas OR worse start producing carbon monoxide due to a lack of available oxygen. Perhaps ventilation grilles in you door will reduce the likelihood of partial combustion in your stove creating carbon monoxide? Just a thought.

with your under floor heating maybe using cob might of been a good choice it has great thermol mass

Carbon monoxide is unlikely to be a problem with wood and oil fired boilers as if these are producing carbon monoxide they produces lots of smoke with it, not the case with gas appliances so you can rest easy when it comes to wood and oil fired burners.

better heating setup than the council houses

Your comments on the difference between wood burners and multifuel are interesting, though I sometimes wonder if a lot of wood burners that are sold as such tend to omit the grate for purely cost reasons. I have modified every wood burner I have ever got my hands on by installing some kind of grate and have always noticed a big increase in efficiency when just burning wood in it (even though you lose a small amount of internal volume in the stove). It also makes things a lot better if, in colder conditions, you are burning wood 24/7 because it is much easier to clean out the ash while still running at full output. (A riddler also helps, but in my rather primitive modifications 'riddling' usually involved hitting the grate with a hammer or heavy poker! :) ) Obviously, these are just my personal experiences rather than any knowledge I have of proper stove design. Cheers for keeping the videos coming, in my view this is what the Internet is made for!