It is always a good idea to have a clear reason for wanting a stove. All stoves are different and to help us help you in choosing your perfect stove it is well worth knowing what you want from your stove. We are local to Liskeard and know that many people in Cornwall have a love for stoves. A stove offers rural charm to almost any home, especially some of the fantastically beautiful cottages that Cornwall is famous for. Also as the home of the Eden project, there is a strong environmentally friendly presence in the area, stoves are growing in popularity as more and more people become aware of the environmental benefits of wood burning stoves.

If you are looking to get a stove to provide secondary heat for your home, especially when replacing an inefficient open hearth fire, then the stove's appearance can be often just as important as how it performs. Or you may be after a stove to provide the primary heating for a small house or cottage, especially for holiday homes. If this is case then maybe choosing a stove that takes a back boiler is best. This will not only provide direct heating, but you can use your stove to warm the rest of the house through a central heating system and to provide hot running water.

Whatever reason you want to get stove for, speak to us and benefit from our experience and expertise. We are happy to offer expert advice for anyone looking for the right stove.

Click on the links below to view more information on the manufacturers and their stoves.

Multi-fuel or Wood Burning?

If you are looking for a traditional stove then you really need to choose between multi-fuel or dedicated woodburning. A multi fuel stove is built with a grate in the bottom of the firebox, which allows you to burn coal as well as wood. This is because coal requires a supply of air to come from beneath, while wood burns best on a bed of ash, meaning dedicated wood burning stoves will not have this grate. A wood burner, being designed for the purpose will, generally speaking, burn wood with more efficiency than a multi-fuel stove will, although this is not always the case.

When burning wood it is worth remembering that trees are composed primarily of carbohydrate. As they grow trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and use the energy from the sun and water build themselves carbohydrate. When we fell the trees and after letting them season, we burn them for fuel.

In addition to heat produced while burning, carbon dioxide is also released. This CO² was trapped by the trees as it grew and is now released into the atmosphere. Most of the firewood available for sale commercially in the UK is sourced from properly managed and sustainable forests. This is where every tree felled is replaced with another. So any carbon released in burning wood is trapped again by a new tree. Because of this the total carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere does not increase because of burning the wood and does not contribute to climate change. The total carbon released by burning wood is no more than simply leaving the tree to rot.

There have been issues raised in that since the 1950s more and more parts of the UK have become smoke control areas. This does mean that you would not normally be legally allowed to burn wood. However there are a growing number of stoves which have been passed as exempt by the government. They burn wood very cleanly, meaning very low emissions and have been given official approval to use in smoke control areas.

Heat Rating

All stoves are rated by their heat output range in kilowatts (kW). This rating depends not only on the size of the firebox in the stove, but also on the venting systems (both in and out) and on the type of fuel your stove uses. Generally speaking, if a stove burns hotter (more heat from the stove) the fuel will last less time. This can be controlled by vents allowing you to alter the flow of air into the stove, affecting how quickly (and how hot) the burn is. Mostly this is used when lighting the stove and it also allows the stove to be left on a slow burn, giving off gentle heat all through the night.

A large stoves will have a higher heat rating, for the simple fact that they can burn more fuel. Obviously this will mean that you are using more fuel, so the heat rating must be taken into consideration with the efficiency of the particular stove. We can guide you through picking the right stove for you. Making sure that you end up with a stove that gives the right heat for your home.

We offer our professional supply and installation service throughout the Cornwall area to include the following areas:

We offer an online shop facility to purchase stoves, cookers and cookware. However, we understand that these are quite substantial purchases and we are happy to arrange for one of our fitters to come out to your home to carry out a consultation. In doing this we can be sure to advise you on your choice of stove and positioning, as well as carry out some preliminary planning for the installation of a flue.