The Real Thing

I have just finished putting in a Clearview wood burning stove for a customer. Lining the flue is a dirty job because it must be thoroughly swept first to stop the residual soot from corroding the new stainless steel liner. I bought the stainless steel liner from fluesystems.com. It is sold by the metre so the first thing is to make sure you buy enough. You aren't supposed to join lengths.

A lot of builders shove stainless steel liners in and, on the face of it there doesn't seem much that can go wrong. But it pays to read the small print. Stamped in tiny letters (and I mean tiny) on the flue is the word 'up' and an arrow. This is easy to miss but it is important. The double skin flue is wound in a spiral and the inner stainless steel spiral has a smooth edge and an exposed edge. Imagine wrapping tape around a pipe. If you brush your hand one way you catch the exposed edges,if you rub it the other way you are going with the flow and the exposed edges sit flat. If condensation or tar starts to run down the inside of the flue it needs to run across a smooth surface to prevent the tar catching in the joins. If the liner is the wrong way up, the tar will catch in all the tiny ridges and the chimney will need sweeping more often, perhaps twice a year. If it isn't swept, the liner will eventually catch fire and that may well be the end of the liner. A stainless steel flexible liner may withstand one chimney fire but probably not two.

Personally I prefer solid sections of pumice liner which are far more robust, but fitting these is in anything but a straight chimney is a much bigger job. You have to cut out the brickwork at the bends and it's difficult not to make a mess. In an occupied house it isn't worth the upheaval.

As I put the finishing touches to the slate hearth the householder was itching to light the stove and the kids came down to sit by their first real fire. They were delighted with it and in my experience of having a wood burner of some kind for 30 years that delight doesn't stop when you become an adult. There are few building jobs I do that result in such an enthusiastic response from the customer. I can fully understand why many people think that a home is not a home without a real fire, even though they may forgo the pleasure to save themselves the work and mess.

Personally I would be very reluctant to live in a home without a fire and a solid fuel stove is the most convenient and efficient real fire there is. It hardly ever needs to be cleared of ash and the fire is contained and controllable. But it isn't all about the heat. There is a life there, a whole cycle of expectation and development building up from the first match lighting the paper and kindling right up to the roaring flames and then dying down again. I have heard people say that they light a fire for company. That is a strange concept but I know what they mean.

You just don't get that with a gas fuel effect fire. They are completely predictable. You turn them on and they burn at the same rate until you turn them down or off. Like most simulations it holds out all the promise of the real thing but delivers nothing of the sort.

The other aspect that is missing is cutting the wood. There can be no better workout on a winter's day than a couple of hours spent chopping wood and rather than pointless running on a tread mill or pumping weights it is productive end result. To see my wood store with a nice neat log pile tucked away to dry gladdens my heart. If you feel sluggish and the winter days are dragging, chopping wood in the open air is the cure. There us more than a touch of Zen in the process. To be successful in the art of chopping, you have to perfect a firm, but not frantic, rhythm. You also need concentration (what poeple now call focus). If you don't envisage the axe going all the way through then it is likely to get stuck. Visualise success and the wood will split neatly in two. I believe that golfers say the same thing about their swing. The work doesn't end when you hit the ball.

If you like the sound of this wood chopping malarky but don't have a wood burner fear not, you can chop for me (think of me as your personal fitness trainer) and while I sit in front of my fire you can enjoy the warm feeling of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.