Every woodburning fire or stove will have measurements specified by the manufacturer indicating how far away they must be from flammable objects. You usually get distances from the rear of the appliance and the sides. Please note that distance from the top and from the flue is specified under building regulations and is 500mm from anything combustible (e.g. a wooden beam or plasterboard).

If you are burning only wood, an ash pan is not required. Wood is better burnt on a bed of ash, and you would only shovel ash out when too much builds up (roughly weekly). Smokeless fuel and coal produces more ash than wood and needs air to come up through the grate to burn effectively and an ash pan tends to sit under the grate for ease of emptying daily.

Please see our stove size calculator. This will use your room dimensions to calculate the correct size stove or fire for your room. It is also worth taking into account some other aspects of your home. Reasons for a larger output stove: If you have an older draughty property, you have higher than standard ceilings, you have stairs out of the room, you have limited other heating in the property, if you are going to use the stove every day. Reasons for a smaller output stove: You have a new well insulated property or you only want to use the stove occasionally when it is cold

Ecodesign stoves and fires meet and often exceed the standards set by UK and EU law. Ecodesign wood and solid fuel stoves are highly efficient and give minimum emissions. From January 2022 every wood and solid fuel stove made has to meet the criteria.

Gazco glass fronted gas fires are between 72% and 94% efficiency, balanced flue models tend to be slightly higher than the conventional flue models. Open fronted gas appliances can be as low as 25% efficiency. Gazco’s open fronted gas Logic range goes up to 68.5%. The higher the efficiency of the fire or stove, the more heat you get into the room for the gas used. 

A modern Ecodesign stove will be over 80% efficient and use less than a third of the amount of wood fuel compared to an open fire to give the same amount of heat. Open fires are only about 0-25% efficient, most of the heat from an open fire ends up the chimney, as well as heat from your central heating.