wrote:
Hi Folks,

We currently have a gas fire in our living room, its an imitation with
life like coals etc. We never really use it and have a great fondness
for our parents open fires at home. They of course live on a farm and
have access to turf and wood and such. We are now thinking about
replacing the gas fire with either a stove or just an open fire grate.
The stove we're looking at is a waterford stanley as seen he

http://www.waterfordstanley.com/stanley_stv/oisin.htm

We arent going down the back boiler route as we dont want the hassle of
running pipes etc. The fire would probably be mainly used during the
day as my wife is at home with the kids each day. Currently we have the
gas central heating running which is expensive enough. We're in a 4 bed
semi detached. The idea would be the stove would heat the living space
and spare the gas heating for evening/early morning. Its not really an
energy saving idea though. We just want the warmt of a real fire in the
house.

We're in a bit of a dilema of whether to go for an open fire - buy a
grate/fire back and put that in or to go with the stove. My impression
of the Stoves are they would be more effecient and possibly cleaner but
I dont know.

Any advice on which option to go for would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mick

p.s. away for the weekend so may not be able to reply till Sunday
night/Monday morning


I've recently moved into a house with one of these:

http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_b...rel-Stove.html

It certainly burns OK and chucks out a fair bit of heat once it's got
going. It has ribbed sides to assist dissipation and convection, and
some sort of baffle so heat doesn't go straight up the flue - I'd guess
it's quite efficient as these things go.

It takes a long time to heat up a room (about 2 hours, 5m x 4m, double
glazed), and of course the rest of the house is freezing. And you need
somewhere to store the fuel.

Can't beat it for niceness - but I wouldn't rely on it as the main
source of daytime heating.

Rob