I was asking a while ago on ideas for fitting a wood burning stove once we moved. Well, we now have the house and I am trying to decide what to actually do about it all.

Downstairs in the dining kitchen we have got an Aarow Acorn, I knew there was a stove – but I thought it was a cheap nasty one – so this is what is known as “a result”.

Upstairs in the living room is where I am having dialemmas. There is what looks like an original cast iron fireplace, but missing the fire basket/ash tray. The last owners put a gas pipe into this fireplace, probably intending to put some kind of gas burner in but never got around to it, so it is capped off. They did, however, line the chimney (stuck my head in and looked straight up the thing and into daylight. It’s a stainless job, but should do the trick for anything I want to do.

Question is… do I try and get the existing cast iron fireplace refurbished, or do I rip it out (it pains me to say that!) and pop in a <5kw wood stove (to avoid having to vent the sytem) which would have the advantage of getting rid of drafts too.

At least with the chimney done it should be a pretty straight forward installation 🙂 I suppose an alternative would be to fit a woodburner infront of the old fireplace and leave it in situ? Tempted to take it out though (perhaps fit the old fire somewhere else in the house as “a feature”….

Thoughts?

Toughy – having had a wood stove and open fires my thoughts lie with the wood stove. Open fire places are lovely but on those evenings you can’t arsed to light a fire or are in too late you’ve a gaping hole pouring cold air into the room – and if you haven’t cleaned it out from the night before then it looks messey.

Temporarily I suppose a chimney balloon would get the draught problem knocked, Rob.
I suspect you know the answer really, but yes, here, we’ve got three open fireplaces and they’re all scheduled for replacement with stoves at some point.

If it’s a cast iron fireplace, could a small (and that’s all you’ll need) stove fit in and not look too out of place? From a combustible distance PoV anyway.

So much less maintenance in every way with a stove – cleaning, preparing, getting going – and just the ferrying of material – in fact, if it’s upstairs, you’ll be doing even more fetching and carrying !!

Rip it out and put in a proper, modern woodburner.

Old fires are absolutely shocking at heating rooms. We’ve put in a modern steel woodburner (can do coal too), and it easily heats the room on a small basket of wood all day. Even the cat can’t bear to be close to it.

Yeah – that’s what my head is saying, suppose I could even try selling the fireplace 😉 It’s a pretty small fireplace so getting a woodburner to sit in may be tricky… I will check the dimensions tomorrow though as there may be something! That would be the ideal though as it would only need a register plate fitted and job done. Could do that myself! I could probably just push the capped gas pipe up against the back wall of the old fireplace and leave that in situ too.