Cassette woodburner or gas fire?

[SkodaLabia]

We have a gas pipe coming up through the floor of our living room, and a recess where it's likely there used to be a gas fire. We need to put something in this recess and can't decide whether to do a woodburner (a cassette style one), an open fire or a gas fire. If we go gas, I'd only like a cassette style gas fire, don't like the ones that are masquerading as real fires.
Anyone taken out a gas pipe to put a woodburner in?
Are there any cheap cassette fires of either type that are nice? Struggling to find anything other than the really pricey Stovax etc.

I don't know what a cassette woodburner is but I can tell you from recent personal experience that a woodburner is much, much, much warmer than an open fire (we replaced an open fire). With an open fire almost all the heat goes up the chimney. With a woodburner the heat radiates into the room and the cast iron material retains a lot of heat.

A cassette woodburner is one of those that sits flush in the chimney raised about foot off the floor. Glass fronted.

Yes, a disappointing amount of heat comes out of an open fire, I agree. I'll move on from that idea!

So, one of these things, but should I go operated by gas or wood?

If you are fond of wildlife, a woodburner will give you an interesting variety of spiders, beetles and woodworm to roam around your home.

I prefer a multifuel, you get more heat from a load of solid fuel, and it burns longer. Can be handy if you run out of wood or are too ill/weather too bad to chop up or bring in more.

But I would get gas.

It seems that most are multifuel nowadays. I was keener on wood because there's no ash raking. I'm happy enough with beetles and spiders, woodworm less so!

Yes, have found a gorgeous gas fire (who'd have thought that sentence existed?), and I'm thinking it could be the way to go, particularly as we already have a gas connection to the chimney breast that would have to be removed if we went with wood. It does seem that there's no such thing as a nice looking cheap one, unfortunately, I've fallen in love with a Gazco Riva, which seem to be a bazillion quid.

Thinking we'll do a wood or multifuel in the kitchen instead when we win the lottery.

The photo helped. I have one of those things, smaller (much smaller!) and lower and with a hearth. Mine has a rotating baffle in the bottom covering airholes so we can use it with coke if we want. It replaced a gas fire so the gas pipe came out as part of the installation, all quite straightforward as the fitters were also gas fitters. They do it all the time. If you want flexibility get gas - you turn it on and that's it and if you only want it on for half an hour to take the chill off then you can. I keep having to restrain DH and DS from firelighting when it's not cold because once it's lit, it's lit (unless DS lit it, in which case once it's lit it needs lighting again).