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Getting a log burner fitted in a few weeks and our fitter suggests buying paving stones to make the hearth. We had a look at our local building suppliers and found some really nice rusty slate but by its nature slate seems brittle and uneven so not sure how ideal that is?
What have other people used?
I had a piece of granite cut to size. You can get polished slate and such like on Ebay if you have a look.
my folks have black caithness slate, it's very nice
Slate here, caithness on one, chinese black on another. Also have had bricks in the past, looks very nice if done well.
In fact anything looks good if it is neatly and accurately laid
Probably goes without saying but check building control regs before you go shopping. When we first went to inquire about getting a stove the sales person basically answered every query we had with "illegal" if it meant he could sell us something. No flue liner - illegal. Hearth made of anything other than slate - illegal, no extractor - illegal etc etc*
The old fire we ripped out had a compressed concrete hearth which was also apparently illegal, turns out it was fine. You can also just use floor tiles. Slate is nice but maintenance can be a pain.
edit - *That was at The Stove Yard Newtonards.
The Stove Yard are talking rollocks (as I'm sure you are aware)
And the no extractor...you're not actually meant to have an extractor in the same room as it could draw smoke/fumes out of the stove and into the room.
spooky_b329 - MemberThe Stove Yard are talking rollocks (as I'm sure you are aware)
Yeah, luckily I had done a tiny little bit of research online first so when I heard him say that I was skeptical so I got him to double down on the illegality of something I knew about so I knew he was full of shit.
Our fitter used to work for my wife’s fathers building firm and now purely fits log burning stoves for a living so I leave the legalities to him.
Looked at Granite but didn’t like the shiny uniform finish and prefer a more rustic look. Wife is from Keswick so Cumbrian slate would be a nice nod towards her heritage.
Why is slate high maintenance?
duir - MemberWhy is slate high maintenance?
Well stoves are a dirty, dusty business and slate picks up all the crap of the day as it's somewhat porous and it can stain. It can be hard to clean it up to the point where it looks super sharp. It can be done but not without oil, wd40, wax etc. Varying opinions as to what's best.
Obviously not an issue if you don't mind how it looks. It wouldn't put me off it, but worth noting as someone who's yet to buy.
Think mine is blue/black limestone with a slight bevelled edge. I think it was polished that I selected (might actually be called riven or honed?), but had gone there with the intention of natural. Basically I went there and selected the slab from a massive stock and it was cut for me whilst I waited. Slab was quite blue, but when I later sealed it with an impregnating sealer, it went quite dark almost black, seems to have lightened up a bit again now tho. I might see if I can find some pics for you.
[url= http://www.hoylanddismantling.co.uk/products.php ]http://www.hoylanddismantling.co.uk/products.php[/url]
Why is slate high maintenance?Well stoves are a dirty, dusty business and slate picks up all the crap of the day as it's somewhat porous and it can stain.
I bought Grimex Heavy Duty Grime Remover & Mattstone H2 Impregnating sealer. The sealer has worked well in keeping my hearth easy to clean and stain free. claims to work on honed, rough cut, riven and polished surfaces.
Slate high maintenance?
I have a 50p brush to sweep ash. It looks great. Once I wiped it with a damp sponge. It looked great. Next time I had a fire it got ash on. It looked great. Right now there's ash on it, a poker, bits of wood and shavings, a small axe and a bottle of whisky. Oh a and a dog. It looks great.
If you're worried about dust and ash then a stove might not be for you 🙂
BTW Price for mine was £300 for cut to 1270 x 850. That was for polished/riven/honed or whatever I got, rough cut/natural was fair bit cheaper at about £140, according to my sister (not sure what the dimensions of hers was tho).
Rough slate will be fine if your stove has adjustable legs so it can be levelled - you really don't want your stove wobbling every time you open/close the door.
Depending on the stove you can actually get away with a 12mm thick tile.
Floor tiles here, i couldnt decide whether to get a piece of granite cut with rounded edges. Nice clean look.
I used a supplier in Porthmadoc called Grey Slate and Stone Ltd. I cannot fault them in any way whatsoever. Samples sent to allow me to choose, and the phone discussions with the suppliers helped me make a final decision on an expensive purchase.
I chose the beveled edge
https://slateandstone.net/shop/welsh-slate
I got a slate from an old pool table , cost me nothing. 5 years in & still looking good.
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Slab of polished slate bonded to the wall and chunk of rough/uneven slate on the hearth for me, not bothered about sealing it
floor tiles here
Hmm all good advice, my fitters preferred medium is 3x600x900mm paving slabs of the buyers choice. Looking at his previous work he makes a lovely job of it. It’s a cheap build so paying £100s for a specially made hearth would not be within the confines of my budget.
So all I really need is 3x600x900mm slabs that are all the same size and look rustic.
When we moved in the stove had been installed on some badly fitted and now cracked tiles, I removed them with hammer and chisel exposing the paving slabs beneath, which I then rendered with cement, polished to as smooth a finish as I could before painting very dark grey. Everyone assumes it's slate, and it cost about a tenner. (Plus my time, but I enjoyed doing it)
I’ve used slate slabs on one from the Cheshire Demolition. Bought rough slabs then cut to size with a cheap diamond blade. Cost about £20 for all the slate you see plus another piece
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For the other we used reclaimed quart tiles that I cleaned up with a diamond cup wheel and wire brush. 20p each per tile
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Ours is a riven slate hearth, we bought sealer when we installed it, but I tried it on a piece of waste and wasn’t keen so left it bare.
Yes it gets a little dusty, but If we want it tidy, it takes two minutes to wash with a damp cloth, then it looks awesome.
This is mine the plinth bit is fake slate floor tiles . The joists were cut away where there had originally been a stone slab but it had been removed- I cast a concrete slab in situ and laid the tiles on top. Its a gas flame effect job. Total cost of everything you see including the flue under £800. I think its my favourite DIY job I have done in the flat
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4578/38421063956_f9b6877f34_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4578/38421063956_f9b6877f34_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/21x8ZKb ]IMG_1161[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/25846484@N04/ ]TandemJeremy[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4539/26700808439_3818411cce_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4539/26700808439_3818411cce_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/GFsC7c ]IMG_1162[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/25846484@N04/ ]TandemJeremy[/url], on Flickr
Indian stone
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Looks great and not too expensive.
Not mine, but you get the idea.
What’s under those floor tiles, TJ?
That Indian stone is nice.
Wallop - a 3" thick concrete slab. When the place was built there had been a stone slab there but it had been removed in the 80s refurbishment. I removed the modern boards and the packing and cast a concrete slab. Being a 150 yr old building the floor joists are 9" deep at least. they had been cut down to allow the stone slab to sit level with the floor
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Rough chunks of slate. Was done as a temp fix but I like it.
If I was doing it again I would choose something that's smooth an one piece as its easier to clean, ridges and bumps make it a pain to clean (but not impossible)
Although my stoves a working stove during winter it's lit every day it still cleans up nicely when it's sat for summer.
You can always rely on the Victorians for some decent joists 😆
Just remember OP that you are polluting the environment more than diesel cars, and damaging peoples health so that you can have your nice stove 🙂
We've just fitted a stove in the last month , bought a piece of riven Brazilian slate off the bay from Hereford , I bought riven as i couldnt justify the extra for it honed - when it arrived the underside was sawn to thickness and showed all the grain so I set too with a sander and a file (to do the bevel) and some wet n dry and did it myself 3hrs later I have a beutifull looking hearth . I think we paid 100 notes 900x900mm
Just remember OP that you are polluting the environment more than diesel cars, and damaging peoples health so that you can have your nice stove
Really? Oh well in that I case I better scrap the whole idea and while I am at it scrap my car, give up my job as an airline pilot, stop having any form of heating for my house and never buy anything manufactured ever again. In fact I reckon I could avoid breathing several times a day too if that helps?
We have a stove and it heats the house so effectively that it replaces the gas boiler; when it's lit the heating never comes on so surely that means we are not polluting any more than without the stove lit?
Stone can be bought from any quarry; just ring with the measurements. Here in Lancashire we get a nice pale yellow dense sandstone with brown veins. If you could be bothered and you had a Landy there are even disused quarries where you could pick up a few pieces.
cool just for you princess ill stop using the wood burner and fire up the alternative..... the Oil burning boiler.
Would that suit ?
Valentia slate for us, no problems with it
Just remember OP that you are polluting the environment more than diesel cars, and damaging peoples health so that you can have your nice stove
always find it odd that this argument is wheeled out for stoves but not in threads where people discuss
living 20 miles away from schools and supermarkets
flying every month for work
working in the O&G industry
driving 25K miles a year
owning 2 or 3 cars and/or owning a 3L car
etc....
🙂
working in the O&G industry
Why single us out. ... Without us the computer for cushy it job would be made of what ? Wood ? Remember it's not just vehicle fuel that is a product of o and g 😉
The oil fired boiler in my house was put in around 1985 so until we get that replaced any other form of heating is going to improve our carbon footprint. Wonder what pollution was like 100s of years ago when wood was the primary source of heat........that’s right, not that bad.
I have no doubt that anyone suggesting that wood burners are selfish environmental disasters refuse to fly, drive, turn on their heating, breathe etc.
Anyway, if the right on brigade for the sake of being seen to be right on wouldn’t mind buggering off from this thred please? Then the grown ups that live in the real world can get back to sharing top ideas for hearth stones.
It's a trade between carbon footprint and local air pollution. Do what you can to get good, clean, local, dry wood, cut and split small and burn it hot and cleanly and not on calm, atmosphere temp inversion days, to maximise the benefits to carbon footprints and minimise the impact to pollution.
On the other hand you could burn coal, or burn kiln dried wood shipped in from Eastern Europe, with a higher carbon footprint then coal and harvested unsustainably, or burn treated timber and burn low and slow to create lots of smoke. These are all legal.
Do it well and your neighbours won't know when your stove is lit and you'll save a couple of tonnes of carbon emissions each winter.
Back on the hearth subject, if the hearth isn't quite level and the stove rocks but doesn't have adjustment on the legs, it's easy to pack a back leg with a bit of metal, a coin or two, to stabilise it.
This is ours, as fitted by previous owner
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4552/26704664009_9eaacba9e1_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4552/26704664009_9eaacba9e1_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/GFNoex ]2017-11-17_12-51-09[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahsat/ ]Tasha[/url], on Flickr
From living with it for a year, I'd suggest something that was reasonably smooth. Despite the comments above from people who seem to like to live in a mess 😆 it is nice to be able to sweep up the dust, fallen ashes etc; and the textured nature of these little paving slab things under ours makes that quite hard and rather messy leaving soot stains etc.
I don't know what we got. They just turned up and did the job. Could be black slate, could be concrete (or other material) made to look like black slate.
Quite like it either way.
Glass hearth (cannot be @rsed trying to post a pic). I don't fly, haven't spawned and do limited mileage in the car so the wood burner is my polluting luxury.
Well after causing even more polution in my big evil diesel driving all over Cumbria trying to find something decent for a budget price I gave up. Just for fun I got a quote from Honnister slate mine as my Mrs grew up a few miles from there and it's nice to support the local industry. Sadly £810 plus VAT for 3 paving sized slabs rules them out.
So I ended up back at the local builders merchant looking at £20 each paving slabs but can't decide between the black limestone theat seems the most practical or the light grey rough cut sandstone which looks the nicest.
I got some slate tiles from my local (as in, 2 min up the road) tile/stone place.
The tiles were about £20 all in. Cutting them cost me £25!
Neat cuts though..
DrP
Your local stone surely?