Hi all. I’ve seen some great pics of wood burning stoves on here, and I’m looking for inspiration for ours. It will be 4 or 5kW set in a (previously bricked up) chimney breast, and I’m mostly interested in your hearths and finish of your surrounds/lintels as well before we decide on the final look for ours.
From my research so far:
Stove £500-£1500, you choose!
Flue liner if required c £30/m
Hearth- depends on material
Big cost- labour, depends how much you can do yourself.
There are building regs affecting the installation which are worth checking too.
We’re just organising one, standalone and a tall room so over 5m of internal flue plus exit to roof. About £5k, with slate hearth and stove sat on steel bench.
both of mine one is in the middle of being installed the other is an insert stove..
poor mobile pics.
they give out some terrific heat and are fairly good on logs, i find mine lying around, chop them, then season in a log store ive built. its only big enough for a few ton nothing on the mcmoonter scale!!
Carl Phillips. We’re planning on doing a similar freestanding corner stove thing. What is your hearth made from? And if you don’t mind me asking how much was it?
There were some cracking modern stoves on a thread here quite a while ago. Thinking of a nice red one that someone had – cannot find that thread though!
Ours is really not going well at the moment, which is a shame as we were really looking forward to it. Complete clownular activity by the installers, so far they’ve spent days ripping out the old fireplace, damaged the carpets, gone away, made ludicrous promises of when it will be done and now are scratching heads and keep coming back to “look at it and have a think”. Absolutely nothing that I couldn’t have done to date. Ah well, I’m sure it will be worth it when they eventually figure it out.
Forgive the slight rant, I’m just tired of effectively managing for them.
hearth is riven slate, custom cut to fit the odd corner, I think about £300 😯 the hearth for the insert is polished granite but cost loads so didn’t do that for the freestanding one.
we did look at a glass one but fitter (friend) advised against as all manner of stuff collects around on in and under it esp dog hair/fluff etc and we didn’t want to seal it as the sealant do3es look tired after a while and would discolour etc
we (sorry , she) can just stick the hoover under the free edge of this one and dirt is gone.
There were some cracking modern stoves on a thread here quite a while ago. Thinking of a nice red one that someone had – cannot find that thread though!
I think I recall the thread. I think the stove you mean was a Chesney’s Alpine.
My Aga stove with exposed brick – complete with puppy (fire guard now removed as I can trust the dog not to go and burn himself, so it looks much better)
Just had a metal deflector plate fitted under the Oak beam, just after this pic was taken.
This is the second build I have had to have done on this fireplace, after finding out the first builder was not HETAS registered and it did not comply to regs!
Im curious (not bi), all of you who have the stoves set back in the chimney breast/fireplace, are you not loosing a lot of heat from the stove – i.e. is the spread of heat generally poor?
I helped my father in law stick a stove in his fireplace and the heat output was quite frankly sh7t, though to be fair the head space was only about 3 inches. I’ve currently got an open fire, though would dearly love a stove as long as i actually get some heat generated from it.. Also can you get “miniature” stoves?
Im curious (not bi), all of you who have the stoves set back in the chimney breast/fireplace, are you not loosing a lot of heat from the stove – i.e. is the spread of heat generally poor?
Yep you are right Sui, they perform a hell of a lot better if you can have them out of your fireplace, we decided it would be safer to have it set back with two little children in our home.
Mine belts out the heat like crazy – so we definitely don’t suffer having it recessed into the fireplace.
Plus the front of the hearth must stick out past the front of the stove by a minimum (building regs) amount – so we’d need to extend the hearth out into the room even more if we did that. It’d end up with a huge bit of floor given over to the fire.
Our chimney is lined and the top of the fireplace has a big metal plate across it to deflect heat into the room which probably helps. I don’t know if it makes a difference but our stove is cast iron and not steel.
Currently thinking of putting one in the back left corner of our living room of our 12 year old detached house with flue going straight up through a cupboard upstairs (possibly need to be boxed in) and then out the roof (seemingly cheaper than out though a hole in the side of the house and up according to the internet).
Was thinking of fitting a standard rectangular stove at an angle across the corner but don’t think it would fit as it would be a bit tight for the doors out to the conservatory on the back wall. They are approximately 600mm from the side wall and open inwards.
Came across a corner stove which could be feasible but not many around to choose from. Would give good views from all angles in the living room
Anything to worry about with that sort of install?
The wood store would also add a little distance from the conservatory door/back wall.
Im curious (not bi), all of you who have the stoves set back in the chimney breast/fireplace, are you not loosing a lot of heat from the stove – i.e. is the spread of heat generally poor?
Mine is set back in the old fireplace. Heat does go into the wall and sides, of course it comes out later. Some is on the neighbours’ side, they don’t mind. Plus the stove is less obvious in the summer months.
I think a big part of the heating is from convection, that’s what you feel going out of the door and up the stairs.
Helios, we have the same quarry tiles as you and looking for a few replacements as a couple of ours are cracked – you don’t happen to know of any reclamation yards who have them do you?
Thanks all, food for thought. Anyone got an opinion on how much to spend on the stove itself, we’ve seen sub £400 chinese imports to £1100+ Morso’s. Don’t want to break the bank but want a decent life out of it. This will be a ‘luxury’ stove in that we also have central heating, so it won’t be used especially heavily. Also, we intend to just use wood, any comments on wood only versus multifuel stoves please?
Cheers
Edit- any photos/ideas for small log store for outside too please!
Our Firebelly (bought direct) cost £1200 for the stove + £600 for fitting + £can’t remember for twinwall flue (no chimney in our house). c£2500-3000 all in.
We have central heating, but it’s LPG bottle powered so very expensive (think £130 every 7-10 days in winter – ouch!), so this is a significant supplement to that.
Dot: Ours were hidding under a nasty cheap carpet, covered in adhesive, paint splatter, concrete and random plaster. A couple of weeks of back-breaking work (seriously – I needed physio) had them all shiney and nice looking again – but they were all in situ so I’m afriad I didn’t have to get any reclaimed ones to finish the job. Good luck.
edit: having said that – this place is round the corner from my folks, really good, and may have what you’re after – Hadley Reclaimed
We are just in the process of installing a stove, and one thing that is causing us a bit of grief is that the stove must be 300mm away from any combustable surface.
Consequentially we’ve two choices; construct a non-combustable wall behind and then can move it to within 51mm, or leave it at 300mm and just accept we’ve a bigger hearth and the stove further into the room. The flue to going straight up either way.
This is what I did for a corner fitting in my kitchen/family room.
It could be tucked further into the corner if space was more of an issue.
Twinwall flue is behind the wall and up through a wardrobe upstairs.
Morso S10-70
Don’t get a chinese/B&Q stove. There are plenty of excellent quality Brit made stoves with lifetime warranty and good spares backup for a little extra. Aarrow Acorn 4 or 5 would be my first choice.
Or a Dunsley or Brosely for some cast iron goodness.