Coal fires

[Pinkjenny]

second thread of the day...

We have inherited a coal fire with our new house, which is gorgeous and I wish to keep. Dh is used to lighting them and I know we will need to have the chimney swept. But what surround do we get? The surround there at the moment seems to be a marble and brass affair. I would want cream or White, but what materials do we need to use?

a light colour is a bad idea because you will spend alot of time cleaning it! coal fires are rather dirty and produce alot of unseen dirt in your house, i had to clean at least twice a week right through. They are very nice to look at and use occasionally but if you are going to use it as your main source of heat then they are alot of messing about.

after five years we took ours out and put a gas fire in - it even worked out cheaper to run as it was costing us about £30 a week in coal during the winter then on top of that was the logs and kindling

Thanks for the feedback, maybe we will get rid after all.

If you happen to get to Sheffield PJ then DH has a fireplace showroom and can advise/supply. Very good even though I say so myself.

If you can afford it I would replace it with a wood-burner. Much cleaner, much more efficient in terms of the amount of heat it gets into the room, and if a previous poster's experience is anything to go by, much cheaper. We've had a log fire just about ever single night since beginning of November and still have a good few weeks' worth of logs left from a truck load which cost us £130. If you can get hold of some old pallets to chop up for kindling then you won't need to spend anything on kindling either. It has kept the fairly large living room toasty warm, plus the bedroom upstairs too. We've used noticeably less heating oil since having it installed too.

Absolutely agree about getting a wood burner. We have 2 and they're absolutely fabulous!