[Closed] Open fire/log burner or gas?

as long as you are not in an urban area where you really dont want to be adding to airborne particulates, and you have a free supply of fuel, you'd be mad not to go with a log burner. You'll need to budget the thick end of £1k on an install on top of the stove cost though.

And make sure you have plenty of space to store wood under cover for at least a year. If your bro will only deliver wood in chords you'll need a chainsaw, horse, and then a splitting maul for processing.

If you can get the logs and its not your main heating get a log burner.  I have a gas fake log burner - I live in an attic flat in the city so it makes sense for me.  Gas ones give out a lot less heat than a real one although if its secondary heating does that matter?:

A log burner is way more efficient than an open fire.

However log burners still chuck out loads of pollution.  They are the current middle class thing to have.

We are looking at new houses at the min and just about every new home has one yet in theory the house should be super efficient and come with under floor heating etc.

IMO it won’t be long before new builds are band from having them

Irrespective of availability of arb waste, do you have the time and space to process the limbs into logs?

My new gas stove is arriving this week for our new place - 10+ years of heating the house ad ho****er with a boiler stove (+ solar thermal & oil) behind me.

I won't miss the mess. Anyone want to buy a couple of chainsaws? 😉

Aye, as OTS, 8 years of chopping n cutting, I'll manage another few years tops, then buy wood in, or go gas.

Do you want the burner for heat and are you planning on running it most days? That can be a chore but I think some treat it as a hobby. We have open fires that are original to the house. Never felt the need to rip them out. We just have the occasional fire as a treat. Bonfire night, around christmas, and the odd winter night. Not much hassle and quite nice

What size log burner would you need. We stayed somewhere that had a log burner but it was small so you had to chop logs up really small and it didn't give out much heat.

I actually prefer the look of an open fire, just feels nicer than a log burner but appreciate its nowhere near as efficient.

Logs here - three stoves in our downstairs and one in the workshop. The workshop burns my woodworking offcuts. The house has CH throughout, and the stoves are there to add warmth, character and as a power cut contingency. With them all running, the whole house is warmed sufficiently that the CH doesn't really kick in.

We get through a couple of tons a year, which I cut from a permissive wood just down the road. I love the work - trundling in the woods on a little tractor, dropping a poorly growing Ash (or processing a windblown tree) and bringing it all home. We have a hydraulic splitter which taken most of the effort out of splitting.

With a free supply of (delivered?) logs I'd have no hesitation in having a stove. If any of the above sounds like a horrid chore, you may be better with gas.

If no one is home during the day you will still need central heating as starting a log fire after work in a cold house isn’t nice.

I had a log burner in my old house and have a gas fire now. Log burner is more homley and warmer, but also more faff, cleaning it, chopping wood, kindling and so on. Also you need to feed it every 1.5 to 2 hrs, so during the day on weekends will have to be around to do that.

I would probably go gas, but as you have a free supply of logs then that could sway it, although with gas central heating.

Stoner has nailed it really. I'd add that you really want to love all the wood processing (and collecting) otherwise it can be a proper chore. If you have a steady free supply that is half the battle, otherwise it's a constant eye out for firewood opportunities, pretty much year round.

We have a small (5w) morso in our bungalow, it heats the whole place pretty quickly. I've not timed it but it is pretty much the same warm up time as running the central heating - the house is reasonably well insulated though so is rarely chilled. In the winter we run the rads for 30 mins in the morning, in the evening it's all on the burner only. I get the burner and flue cleaned once a year and probably have 2 winters of wood processed and stored at any one time.

We had open fires when we were kids, I loved it but you kind of want to be on top of them to feel the warmth. And they are pretty dirty, the room will get dusty as. I couldn't see myself going back to one although aesthetically they are very appealing.

We live in a Victorian Terraced house. Originally it had open fires (with grates etc for coal); these were OK, but very ineffective at heating the rooms as 85% of the heat goes up the chimney. We then had a log burned installed and that has become the main heating source throughout winter even though a) we buy logs and b) we have gas CH throughout the house. It's just so much nicer to use and the whole family (we us two and four cats) all sit round the fire every evening. The Gas CH gets used in the morning and for heating water, but rarely switched on in the evenings.

wifey would like a log burner.  we have a proper drafty old place which I'm currently doing up.

If has an open gas fire flame thing which looks lovely but I think it's actually colder with it running than it off with the chimney sealed up!

When people are recommending gas is it a gas log burner lookalike?

We have a gas log burner affair in our 20 year old house. It’s not the same  as a log burner but close. It does a much better job of radiating the heat than the open gad fire at our last place that was massively ineffective at heating, so much so that burning money would have been better and cheaper.

If you treat having a log burner as a hobby, it's lovely, and a couple of hours with a splitting maul is a good core workout.

Thanks for all of the comments. It is just for supplementary heating, from the replies I think the woodburner looks like the best option.