convert gas fire to a wood burning insert?

[phelix]

Our home was built in the late 80s. It has an external chimney that's about 50cm deep and 110cm wide on the outside of the house and it then tapers to 60cm wide as it goes up to past the roof. Inside is a monster of a brick and tile hearth (1.8m wide and 50cm deep) and there's a small (40cm wide) gas fire all but lost in the middle. The back of the fire looks to be a pre-formed set of cast concrete-like pieces one of which is labelled "baxi". The flue goes up very near the front The chimney and hearth are ludicrously large for the gas fire but so be it. We would ike a glass fronted wood burning insert, perhaps 80 or 90cm wide. Having grown up with a fireplace with a crackling fire almost every evening in the winter I miss it - the gas fire gives off some heat but does little for the visuals. So my question is - what is the likelihood that we can install such an insert without major works on the chimney? An example is http://morso.co.uk/product/morso-s80-90/ Happy to get rid of the hearth and replace it with something much more minimalist.

[Paul Drawmer]

If you install a wood stove into an existing fireplace, you should line the chimney with some form of insulated liner. This is because the wood stove will burn with very little airflow, and gases will go up the chimney slowly. If the flue is uninsulated, the flue gasses will cool down and the chimney will fail to 'draw' properly. Wood burner exhaust gases contain a high percentage of tar, which will condense onto the inside of the chimney. This tar is a fire hazard, and there will be higher deposits in a cold uninsulated chimney. It is this tar which causes the black staining sometimes seen on the outside of chimneys used for wood burners.

So the first answer is - you'll need to line the chimney.

If you're going to that bother, then fitting a purely inset type stove will ensure that a lot of the heat either goes up the chimney or just heats the chimney breast.

To get high efficiency you would need to take out all the fire backs and fit a register plate above the fireplace. Then you could fit a free standing stove in the now enlarged fireplace, which would allow air to circulate around the stove and heat the room better.