Cost to remove gas fire and install wood burner

[TeaChocKitKat]

I'm buying a house which used to have a coal fire (it has a chimney). There's currently an ugly gas fire there - I'd love to get rid of it and replace it with a wood burner. Assuming the chimney still works, how much do you think it will cost?

The house is from the 1960s so any suggestions on how to do it sympathetically with the house are also gratefully received!
Thanks

I also think they are likely to be banned in the near future so it's probably not worth the money

Are wood burners more polluting than an open fireplace? (Out of curiosity we have no kind of fireplace at all in our house, and no plans to get one)
I thought with current fuel prices more people would use log fires/wood burners to save money.
(Although would obviously take a while to offset the cost of installing one)

We didn't have the gas fire to remove; we had an open hearth. We were £5000 but bought an expensive stove that cost £2000.

There really is so much rubbish on this thread, regarding woodburners.

The facts are an open fire causes more pollution than a woodburner and If you burn dry seasoned wood, they do not produce more pollution than all cars.

Also people who live rurally like me and millions of others, who have no mains gas, they are a very economical way of heating your home.

Wood burners would be a lot better if people used dry wood and stopped burning coal, people are still using house coal, despite it being banned for sale, also, the ecodesign ones are a lot better than 'burners from 10 or 20 years ago.

But the issue here isn't people using wood burners but the Govt charging us so much for energy, our bills are going up, even those on E7 (often in poorer households with no alternatives, are seeing bills going up even further) Germany's are going down, 12% on average, France's never really went up in the first place.

Electricity, gas and oil production is not pollution free either, many other forms of pollution than particulates.

For many people, a woodburner or an open fire, is their only source of heating.

However, if i had a gas fire all set up, i'd never be swapping out for a woodburner, storage, costs, mtce, dirt/dust plus good quality wood is very expensive to buy and finally, as you get older, splitting kindling, carrying wood around will become harder.

If you do go ahead, get a 904/904 liner, the cheaper ones do not last as long and its extremely expensive to replace.

Im having a very modern wood burner put into my house OP, it's a 1980's house, there is no chimney and its terraced, woodburner guy said he can put it through the middle of the house through the airing cupboard and the loft.
I haven't had the quote yet but he said it would be around £3k because it a complex fit.

Open fireplaces are more polluting than wood burners, but both are polluting, no matter what fuel you burn.

London is a Smoke Control Area, as are most cities and large towns in England, so restrictions are very tight about what you are allowed to burn.

www.london.gov.uk/programmes-and-strategies/environment-and-climate-change/pollution-and-air-quality/guidance-wood-burning-london

This is mine, there was a gas one before. All that cost £4500 about 4 years ago. It was my birthday present, can't imagine not having one if we ever move....

We paid around £3.5k in 2016 in our 1960 house, which included:

Removing and disconnecting old gas fire
Removing ugly large brick surround
Opening up behind the old brickwork to original fireplace under chimney plus cleanup and plastering to smooth finish
Installing new wood burner (decent Swedish model and size)
Line chimney, add pipework etc
Fit bespoke oak beam
Install honed granite hearth

Labour was just under £700 plus VAT, the rest was materials.
I expect costs have gone up since then of course!

It used to be about £150 per metre of the double lined stainless steel liner which obviously adds up.

I've always lived in a house with a wood burner. I used to live in the Forest of Dean where it wasn't uncommon for the wood burner to heat the entire house and water (not as pretty as the ones you get now). Everyone had a saw horse and a chopping block and once a year you'd get a lorry load of trunks to saw and chop for the winter.

I have one (already in house I bought) and its annoying. Rather have gas. It affects my breathing, gives me a headache, makes a hell of a mess, takes at least half hour to warm up and get going and you have to get chimney swept regularly which is 100 pound a pop.
Wood ain't cheap either. Prices are going up all the time.

The price of logs has shot up.

A good article stating why it’s not a good idea
amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/wood-burners-emit-more-particle-pollution-than-traffic-uk-data-shows

yes they collectively created more small particle pollution than (all) cars.
and like I said before gave me a massive headache.

I would look at why the top of stove collar to stove pipe is not sealed with fire proof putty/cement and the min distances to combustibles plus storing logs inches from a red hot stove is not recommended either.

My FiL recently removed a wood burner with a wooden lintel like yours, the back of the lintel was charred from years of being too close to the flue, he had no idea.

Read this it explains why you really need to consider wood burning stove.

Last year it cost us £100 to have the gas capped off to an old gas fire (yes, yes gas safe registered engineer - corgi hasn’t been a thing for a while).

Then it was £2299 for the removal and fitting of the wood burner to the existing chimney with a defra approved stove, chimney liner, chimney cap, brickwork in the chamber finished, slate hearth and oak beam mantel.

Probably more now though. If you’re in Yorkshire, the guys we used were very good. The only snag was the delay to the delivery of the stove. They did all the work in one day on the Thursday and came back on the Saturday with the stove and a bag of logs to apologise for the delay.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/27/wood-burning-stove-environment-home-toxins

£3.5k about 7 years ago. That was for the hole in the breast to be widened as it was tiny (gas fire previously removed) stove, oak mantle, chimney lining, downlighting and the breast replastered.

^This...

I really like having a woodburner & don't have headaches etc from it, have you a Carbon Monoxide alarm and or leaks? a well designed stove should not be putting fumes into your home.

BUT they are not the ideal either nor cheap unless you have free logs and dry storage.

And it will not be beneficial for your neighbours who have asthma or other breathing problems

I would only ever have considered a woodburner if I lived rurally and had access to a wood supply and storage. Now that I have an asthmatic child I will never have one.

There’s really no justification to install one in an urban or suburban setting and I suspect they will be banned in this context before too long.

My neighbours have their own log burners

Modern ones don't and heat very efficiently.

Oh God, you couldn’t pay me enough to have a wood burner in my home, OP, despite the cosy feel they produce.

They’re incredibly polluting - yes, even the modern ones. You and your neighbours will be breathing in huge amounts of particulates just at a time when all the research is starting to emerge about what a huge factor this is in cancers, heart disease, miscarriage, stillbirth, dementia and other really awful things you don’t want to get.

Would you sit in a room with 750 HGVs all running their engines and piping their exhausts directly into the space you’re in and into the air you breathe? Because that’s the equivalent. If that sounds awful, don’t get the wood burner.