SWMBO wants an inset Gas fire for the lounge. We know about flue types, fuel types etc but there is still a bewildering choice of fires. Are they any makes to prefer or avoid? Is having a slide control (or remote control) worth it? Anything else that we should take into account.
In article , Mark writes
Yep, the constant 1kW[1] you will lose up the flue when the fire isn't on ;-)
[1] Actually I think that is the estimate for a moderately sized conventional chimney so a gas fire flue opening may be less but certainly not trivial.
My mother has two gas fires - one open flue, the other room-sealed balanced flue. The losses from the open flue are very noticeable. I suspect that she overall loses more from the flue than she gains from the fire - i.e. by losing warm room air when fire is off as well as what is drawn in when burning.
My choice would a room-sealed device.
In the south, I had excellent parts service and helpful attitude from:
As usual, no connection except...
Do they not have a damper to close the flue when not in use? All the open fires, gas or wood-burning, I used in the US had a closable damper, which it was very advisable to remember to open when the fire was used again! Some were operated by a hanging chain, some by a rotating rod, some by a lever.
Plus, if it's a "living flame/coal/log effect" jobbie, don't expect any heat from it although the glass fronted ones are rather better IMHO.
I suspect that would be illegal for a gas fire in the UK. Anyone now for sure?
"Oh sorry you/they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, forgot to re-open the flue damper."
In article , Davey writes
Prohibited for a flue with a gas flue for safety reasons.
For conventional flues I'm sure some have them but none in my house or in those of my relatives have them.
In article , polygonum writes
Yes, good call, I had forgotten about those.
Hopefully the chosen location will be on an outside wall.
Waste of a wall, can't put anything in front closer than X inches, can't put anything above like mirror as old favourite for setting light to clothes, needs hole to outside for air, so expect complaints about draught.
You would imagine by now some form of heat exchanger would be standard to keep the heat as at least some convection device inside and not let it go up the flu. As Frank Sinatra famously sung. There's a Flaw in My Flu.
While on the subject of gas fires, is it a good plan at the moment for a house with only electricity for everything to get a bottled gas heater of some kind? OK these can be expensive to run, and one has to use a CO2 detector in poorly ventilated places... Brian
No. It's an internal wall with an extant fireplace. I believe the high efficiency models should not lose too much heat up the chimney, since they claim in excess of 80% effeciency. They do have heat exchangers to extract heat from the flu gasses.
I would expect a room-sealed fire to be exceedingly expensive too and quite complicated. I can't find any price lists ATM.
Anyway, anything would be better than now, where we just have an empty hole in the wall. It used to house a backboiler but the boiler has been relocated elsewhere.
I would have thought it would be easy to devise a safety feature to prevent that happening - like the gas can't be switched on unless the damper is open.
Might be 80% efficient in terms of "when burning gas, 80% of the heat gets pushed into the room". That, I feel sure, does not allow for "when switched off, considerable amounts of warmed air are drawn up the chimney which requires the background central heating to be running (much?) more of the time".
Prices? I do not know - the one I know was fitted an awfully long time ago.
They do not appear to have allowed that in relation to ventilation for an open boiler. Would not seem impossible to have some interlink mechanism to allow the wall vent to be closed when boiler is off, but it is not allowed. I suspect things like "fail safe" are not easy or inexpensive to achieve.
In commercial kitchens, you cannot turn the gas on unless an extractor fan is running.
I would hope that the efficiency rating would include any such losses. Looking at the design of some HE models the path for air to be drawn from the room and up the chimney is quite long and restricted.
Anyhow I can't imagine it being any worse then now since the room air can escape up the chimney with no restriction at all.
I would have thought it was trivial & cheap. All is needed is a sensor to detect the damper is open. If not then the gas supply is cut off. If the sensor fails then no gas either.
How can the efficiency rating possibly allow for that?
Imagine, a room with such a heater, and it is used for one hour in the year.
And a second room where the heater is used 24/7/365.
In the first room, even if the loss were tiny, it would very likely make the efficiency negative (compared to a blocked off flue).
In the second room, it might get near the claimed peak efficiency.
The reality will be somewhere between the two. And they cannot know how much use you will make of the heater so cannot make allowance in their claims.
If it were trivial and cheap - and, of course, reliable - it is surprising that such devices are not available and fitted (after due changes to regulation to permit them).
I did actually write "ventilation for an open boiler" - rather than flue. The impact on warmth in a house of having the required square inches of ventilation for open flue gas appliances is huge and would be well worth addressing. The tack taken, for many reasons, has been towards room-sealed for boilers.
It doesn't matter how much use the fire has. The efficiency can be measured simply: Hear output into room/total energy used. Any losses up the chimney would be part of this equation.
When not in use efficiency has no meaning since no gas is being consumed.
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