No chimney? No problem!

If you want a wood burner but you don’t have a chimney, there is a 95% chance that you can still have a stove in your house. The chimney is the most important part of the installation and there are a couple of different options.

Using an insulated pre-fabricated chimney you can create a chimney through your house coming out of the roof.

Going through the house can have the added benefit of extra warmth from the chimney to your upstairs room, and when the chimney comes through the roof you can paint it to match the roof tiles so that it blends in well with the surroundings.

The other option is to rise from the top of the stove with an “ordinary” 6” black flue pipe for a metre or so and then take a 45 degree angle through the wall and join to an insulated chimney to go up to roof level. This has to take place on an outside wall.

If you have a gas supply then an even easier option would be to have a balanced flue stove. This is a flue which goes straight through the wall horizontally and terminates on the outside.

There is a very wide choice of balanced flue stoves these days and you can have the look of a traditional wood burning stove, but with the ease of a remote controlled gas stove to get the fire going instantly and with no log chopping! These do have to be placed on an outside wall. Go to www.gazco.co.uk for some ideas for gas stoves, and they will tell you if a balanced flue version is available. Alternatively have another look at our gas stove section.

Then there is the electric fire or stove. These are the ultimate in ease and just have to plug in to a normal socket and you’re away. These can come as fire look-alikes that can sit flat to the wall, on any wall, in any part of the house. Or, they can come as a stove which can sit slightly forward in to the room to make a feature of it. Neither of these is subject to any building regulations for hearths, distances etc so are the easiest by far to install in to your home.

The flame effect of the electric fire has vastly improved over the last few years, and in doing so a more realistic look is given out from the stove. Go to www.dimplex.co.uk for a look at some new electric fires.