Convert to open fire? From gas.
Discussion
Hi, couple of pics ...
For the great and learned experts on here.
We have a house that's circa 400 years old (or at least this bit is). The fireplace at some point has had a gas fire installed where once upon a time it would have been ye, olde fireplace.
The gas fire has not worked for the last ten years.
We'd like a 'proper' fire here.
I had a very quick look into the chimney with a boreoscope and it looks old! And blackened.
I've just lit two small pieces of kindling to see if smoke comes out the chimney just fine. It does.
I presume I can't just remove the false 'coals' from this fire and just start using it?
Or can I?
Thoughts please.
And this one shows the exit for the smoke into the chimney
For the great and learned experts on here.
We have a house that's circa 400 years old (or at least this bit is). The fireplace at some point has had a gas fire installed where once upon a time it would have been ye, olde fireplace.
The gas fire has not worked for the last ten years.
We'd like a 'proper' fire here.
I had a very quick look into the chimney with a boreoscope and it looks old! And blackened.
I've just lit two small pieces of kindling to see if smoke comes out the chimney just fine. It does.
I presume I can't just remove the false 'coals' from this fire and just start using it?
Or can I?
Thoughts please.
And this one shows the exit for the smoke into the chimney
You can't light a real fire in the gas fire, you need to remove it completely and see what's behind, Id expect you'll have to remove those tiles too though.
I once did something similar, but the gas fire already sat in a concrete fire back which is designed for open fires. An easily removable metal surround revealed what's shown in the pic below, I removed the gas fire and insulation and added a fire back lintel. I refitted the metal surround and it was good to go.
It was medium effort and minimal cost, but I wouldn't do it again. A bit later we lined the chimney in the next room for a stove and then got smoke passing from the open fire down the lined chimney into the other room, this meant we couldn't use the open fire again, we didn't mind since the stove made us realise how useless open fires are...
For a real fire in yours with minimal upheaval, you could look at inset stoves.
I once did something similar, but the gas fire already sat in a concrete fire back which is designed for open fires. An easily removable metal surround revealed what's shown in the pic below, I removed the gas fire and insulation and added a fire back lintel. I refitted the metal surround and it was good to go.
It was medium effort and minimal cost, but I wouldn't do it again. A bit later we lined the chimney in the next room for a stove and then got smoke passing from the open fire down the lined chimney into the other room, this meant we couldn't use the open fire again, we didn't mind since the stove made us realise how useless open fires are...
For a real fire in yours with minimal upheaval, you could look at inset stoves.
We had a deactivated gas fire in what was a standard coal fireplace in a 1915 house.
I tried an open coal fire (the gas fire was long gone and the supply safely capped a distance away) but the pot on the top was too restrictive, so I asked a stove place their thoughts in terms of getting a simple fire back in by removing the pot (as the house had operated in its early days).
They advised against it, stated that once a gas fire was registered to a specific fire place, if you revert to open, you might invalidate your house insurance. You can open up the flue to allow for latest regs to allow open burning, but this is prohibitively expensive, so we went with a dual fuel wood burner.
An open fire loses around 80% of its heat up the chimney but a stove type fireplace slashes this and is much warmer and more efficient.
Not sure if the whole legality thing is correct but we just went for dual fuel anyway.
Have a friend with an open fire and they never had gas in the first place so can burn ad-infinitim…
I tried an open coal fire (the gas fire was long gone and the supply safely capped a distance away) but the pot on the top was too restrictive, so I asked a stove place their thoughts in terms of getting a simple fire back in by removing the pot (as the house had operated in its early days).
They advised against it, stated that once a gas fire was registered to a specific fire place, if you revert to open, you might invalidate your house insurance. You can open up the flue to allow for latest regs to allow open burning, but this is prohibitively expensive, so we went with a dual fuel wood burner.
An open fire loses around 80% of its heat up the chimney but a stove type fireplace slashes this and is much warmer and more efficient.
Not sure if the whole legality thing is correct but we just went for dual fuel anyway.
Have a friend with an open fire and they never had gas in the first place so can burn ad-infinitim…
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