I'm thinking of getting a gas fire installed but I don't have a flue or a chimney. It will be against an outside wall and the gas pipe is located behind the skirting where I would like the fireplace.
I understand I can get a balanced flue, power flue or flueless gas fire. I was just wondering if anyone had one of these types and what they thought of them.
Just out of interest, how can a gas fire without a flue be safe?
Where does the carbon monoxide go!?
Sparks...
The flueless types are quite low output (IIRC, 1.5kW for a habitable room) and put water vapour back into the room (but are practically 100% efficient) so are ideal for use in conjunction with central heating (which provides most of the heat you need but tends to dry out the air).
If you need to seriously heat the room you will need a flued type.
No experience of them though - sorry
-- John Stumbles
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Same way a gas hob/oven/grill is safe (and they are a damn site more than 1.5kw).
It kills you, so it's best to make sure it doesn't produce any.
A gas fire doesn't *have* to produce carbon monoxide. In fact if it does, then it's not burning efficiently because the hydrocarbons in the fuel gas are being incompletely burnt (oxidised) into carbon *mon*oxide instead of completely oxidised into carbon *di*oxide.
Rob Graham
Remember that gas fires are generally very inefficient compared to modern boilers. I wouldn't remove any radiators, if there are any.
Christian.
NB there are still rules and regs as to where these can and can't be fitted; eg AFAIK you can't have it exiting on to a pavement.
David
We got rid of our balanced flue fire as it was old, ugly and kept cutting out. While it was working properly it produced more than enough heat for our
19' x 18' room, so much so that we usually had it set down at minimum once the room had warmed up. Disadvantages are obviously cutting the hole in the wall for the flue, regulations as to where you can put flues, the cost of the fire (much more than a standard, non-balanced flue gas fire) and the cost of installation. Flueless sound like an ideal proposition but you have to remember they put a lot of moisture back into the air.In the end we went for an electric fire. Doing the calculations on our average usage, the relative cost of the energy sources and the cost of the fires and installation, it would have taken about 10 years for the gas fire to have started to save us money over the electric.
AIUI the outputs are more like 2.5kW or 3.5kW however this means they need to be fitted in a substantially sized rooms.
They have a limit of 50W/m^3 when fitted in rooms so 50m^3 room to fit a
2.5 kW unit.
In addition to quite some restriction on the output of the units they are also fitted with a catalyst to bring the CO down.
Up to 50ppm CO is considered the Euro safe level. IIRC.
Also flueless fires require _E N O U R M O U S_ fixed permenant purpose provided ventilation (minimum 100cm2) and more for larger units.
To the OP, I would say the balanced type would be the most sensible unless you need the humidity and the cost of a flueless unit.
In article , Christian McArdle writes
The Gazco Riva Cassette 'hole in wall' fires are about 80% efficient which is as good as most non-condensing boilers
The yellow CO producing flame looks a lot better than the 100% CO2 producing efficient blue flame though.
For those who can remember back to school, this was the opening and closing of the air hole on the bunsen burner... ;-)
F./
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