I have been using a Stanley stove with a back boiler for the past ten years.

[eugenepj]

I have been using a Stanley stove with a back boiler for the past ten years. We are now converting to gas and have disconnected the stove from the mains. We would like to keep the stove but I am concerned about how safe/unsafe that might be. I lit a fire and as I had been told, we had a sauna like few hours and when I lit another fire last night, there was no steam. Is there any danger about burning coal fires as the stove is or should I do anything necessary that I'm not aware off? Thanks for any advice folks 🙂

 

[Ric2013]

The concern is that when the empty boiler eventually burns through due to being run dry, fumes can escape through the empty pipework and cause CO poisoning to the occupants. Some plumbers have sandfilled the pipework to prevent this (the sand avoids an explosion risk while mostly blocking the pipework) but this is now considered insufficiently safe. I'm not sure if any studies have been made into what happens if you were to drill a hole in the boiler and then put proper end caps on the pipework.

The accepted way to deal with this though is to remove the backboiler and convert the stove back to being a dry stove, assuming parts are available and that the stove was designed with this in mind. In fairness, this makes sense in that any dry running of the boiler will eventually cause its failure and then you'll be removing it anyway, so you may as well sell the backboiler and use the money to go towards the conversion to dry use.