Fireplaces, Chimneys and Stoves [Hardcover]

For anyone thinking about installing or replacing a fireplace or stove, this book is extremely informative. It covers the principles involved, the range of options available, the rules and regulations and the practical aspects.

It covers the range of "appliances" (as it calls them) available: gas fires, wood fires, other solid fuel fires - how they work and their advantages and disadvantages. There are plenty of helpful colour pictures - mostly from manufacturers.

The book explains in detail the rules and regulations for the installation of fires and stoves and the construction of chimneys. After carefully reading through it, I felt I probably could design an installation that a bricklayer could then construct - notwithstanding the author's preface starts "This book is not intended as a textbook on the construction of chimney or the installation of a fireplace or stove - the skills needed for these tasks cannot be learnt in this way (...)".

There is a chapter on the refurbishment and repair of flues with photographs taken during actual refurbishment projects. This gives a very good understanding of what is involved.

Googling the author's name shows that he is clearly a respected expert in the world of stoves and chimneys so that his practical information can presumably be relied on and taken as authoritative.

It sometimes slips into heating engineer jargon. The word "coal" does not seem to be used in even once in the book. The phrase "solid mineral fuel" is used which I assume includes coal. Now and then it refers to a "BS 1251 fireback" without actually explaining exactly what this is. [Relevant to me, as I finally realised that this is the sort of open fire fireback that I wanted to install.]

What I felt let the book down was the some of author's scientific knowledge and explanations, especially when he moves outside the practicalities of stoves and chimneys.
Here are some examples.

The author states:

"The amount of carbon dioxide produced when burning a mature tree is less than it would have absorbed during the growing process".

This has to be wrong; simple chemistry says that, for each gram of CO2 absorbed by the tree in producing wood, exactly one gram of CO2 will be produced when that wood is burned.

The author states:

"(...) the burning of a log produces less ozone-damaging gases than allowing the log to rot on the ground".

This is nonsense. A log rotting on the ground may produce methane, carbon dioxide and other gases, but it produces absolutely no ozone-damaging gas. Such gases (chlorofluorocarbon and bromofluorocarbon compounds, whose molecules contain fluorine atoms) are entirely man-made. They are not produced in nature by rotting logs or by any other process.

Discussing electric heaters he says "when used in the home, the appliance can be between 90 - 100 per cent efficient". This is incorrect. Electric heaters are, for all practical purposes, exactly 100 per cent efficient - for every watt of electric power that arrives at the terminals of an electric heater, one watt of power leaves in the form of heat.

In explaining how a chimney works, the author says:

"The height difference between the base of the flue (...) and the terminal of the flue will cause a pressure difference, because at the top of the flue there is less air above us than when we are at the bottom of the flue. If the low pressure and the high-pressure regions are directly connected, as in this case by the flue within the chimney, the air will travel from the high pressure region, at the base, to a low pressure region, at the top, in an attempt to balance out the difference. It is this movement of air, from the base to the top of the flue that results in the initial draw of the chimney. This initial draw has to be present or it would be impossible to light the fire in the grate without all the smoke entering the room."

This is just nonsense. If the air inside a chimney is at the same temperature as the air outside, there will be no flow of air from bottom to top. The pressure difference between bottom and top is exactly enough to support the weight of the air inside the chimney, just as it is exactly enough to support the weight of the air outside the chimney. I can light my fire without any smoke entering the room - not because of a fictitious "initial draw" but because the warm air from the burning newspaper rises in the chimney like a bubble - weighing less than the cold air it displaces.

The book spells the name of the Greek symbol pi as "pie" - a joke enjoyed by schoolboys through the ages, but which should not be found in a book such as this.

It's a shame that errors such as these slipped in, because they tend to reduce confidence in the book. Even so, I feel it is pretty sure that the practical information it gives is completely sound. Overall, it is a very informative and useful book and I recommend it for anyone thinking about installing or replacing an open fire or a stove of any kind. In helping the house owner make the right choices, it will be a very sound investment.

Good practical book with plenty of illustrations. I especially got a lot of information from the section on 'Safety'. This provided good information on ventilation requirements and why they are important to get the fire/stove working properly and to stop you poisoning yourself.
Couple of points regarding clarity of the combustion science, but they make no difference to the book.

I bought this book as I have an old solid fuel fireplace, and I was trying to decide what to do with it. I was disappointed as I was hoping for practical information, such as how to finish a wall around a fireplace, how to open our a fireplace, or what to use to line an opening that houses a stove. It would have been nice to have information about fire board, vermiculite board, lime render and so on, but such details are absent. The book has a brief overview of the types of fire, which is information that is readily available online, and then an awful lot of information on chimneys/flues, and how to build them, including the various regulations. Perhaps a better title would be "All You Ever Wanted to Know About Chimneys But Were Afraid to Ask". If you are building a chimney, or restoring/reinstating an existing chimney, and you already know all about morter, render, brickwork etc then this book might be of use to you. But if you want practical information, such as the heat resistance of plaster (it will blow and/or crack at temperatures of 50 Celcius and above), or what kind of render to use, then look elsewhere.